






\ ■ > ■ . F .- 

i . • ■■ ; ., I H 

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LIVES 



OF 



ISAAC HEATH, 

AND 

JOHN BOWLES, 

ELDERS OF THE CHURCH, 

AND PRINCIPAL FOUNDERS OF THE 

GRAMMAR SCHOOL IN ROXBURY : 

AND OF 

REV. JOHN ELIOT, JR., 

PREACHER TO THE INDIANS, 
AND FIRST PASTOR OF THE CHUHCH IN NEWTON. / 7t 



A 



BY J. WINGATE THORNTON. 





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[for private DISTRIBUTION.]' 




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The patient research expended in this humble effort 
to revive and preserve the memory of some of the 
principal Founders and Benefactors of Roxbury, affords 
in itself an abundant reward by disclosing the in- 
telligence, virtues and heroism of our Fathers, Avhose 
Institutions lay daily claim to our gratitude. 

J. W. T. 
Highlands, Roxbury, 
Autumn, 1850. 



[fifty copies pklNTED.l 



t . > ' , ' 



HEATH. 



Heath, a pure Saxon word, the name of a plant 
or shrub of the genus erica, of many species, soon 
came to signify a place overgrown with heath, and 
finally has a more general signification meaning a 
place overgrown with shrubs of any kind. The most 
venerable record of England, the Doomsday book, 
proves that it was very early used to designate indi- 
viduals or families who may have lived on a Aea//?, 
and in time, as sur-names came into use to distinguish 
families, and became hereditary, Heath was attached 
to some, by the accident of their locality, and thus by 
its origin must be classed with local sur-names. As 
heaths must have been pretty common in England a 
thousand years ago, it is presumed that the same cir- 
cumstances would give the name to individuals in 
various parts of the country, and it thus affords no 
evidence of any consanguinity at a remote period. 
Heath is a sur-name common in England, occurring 
in Durham, Middlesex, Norfolk, Kent, Hertford- 



4 

shire, Surrey and other counties, bearing as many 
different coats of armor of various heraldic distinc- 
tions. There are several towns of this name in Eng- 
land. 

The Heaths of Kepyer, in the county of Durham, 
were derived from John Heath of London, Warden 
of the Fleet, who died in 1591. He was son of John 
Heath of Twickenham, and grandson of John Heath 
of Heath, county of Middlesex. Sir Robert Heath, 
Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, was de- 
scended from the family in Kent and Surrey. While 
Attorney General of Charles 1st, he obtained a patent 
from his royal master of a vast territory at the 

south, t 

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, under the 
auspicious influences of the protestant reformation, 
and the spirit begotten in the English nation by the 
grand designs of Sir Humphry Gilbert, the Father of 
American Colonization, and the enterprises of his 
brother Sir Walter Raleigh — were born and educated 
the men and women designed by Providence to give 
birth to a new nation, on a new continent, with new in- 
stitutions founded not on Magna Charta, or the grants 
of monarchs, but on the " Rock of Ages," having 
their life in the piety and knowledge — the manhood 
of the people. 

The memory of those who were so honored by 
God in his benign Providence, should be honored by 
us who are in the enjoyment of the blessings they 

t Holmes' Annals, I. 207. 



5 

bequeathed to their posterity. We can show no better 
evidence of our own virtue and intelligence than to 
cherish their names and services with filial affection 
and veneration. Let not those who have *'the mercy 
of a good descent " from these nobles mar their fair 
inheritance by ignoble lives or deeds. The Puritans 
were the spiritual successors and descendants of that 
ancient and widely spread body existing under various 
names, in France, Germany and England, and 
who cannot be better designated by a general name 
than that of " the Reformed before the Reformation." 
The Puritans were the noblest men the world ever 
saw, and to them, under the Providence of God, it is 
mainly indebted for that true liberty which will sweep 
away oppresssion under every power, with omnipo- 
tent force. 

Vaughan says, *' it is the confession of their enemies 
that to this people we owe the whole freedom of our 
constitution," They were *' the great conservators 
of English liberty as then secured by law and the 
means of transmitting it to future generations in a 
form still more safe and simple. Many thousands of 
the most upright and industrious of the people emi- 
grated to America, most of them taking sufficient 
property with them to become planters. Massachu- 
setts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, 
were the settlements in which they sought an asylum. 
The historian of the Puritansf possessed the names of 
nearly eighty clergymen who during this period ac- 

t Mather's Magnalia. 
1* 



6 

companied pious bands of exiles to the new wofld. 
An)ong these was Eliot, whose zeal procured him the 
honorable name of the Apostle to the Indians, and 
whose perseverance supplied that people with the 
Sacred Scriptures in their own tongue,"! 

Among these people, in 1585, Isaac Heath, the 
subject of this memoir was born and ten years later 

Elizabeth , who was to be his future wife. 

About the year 1631, a small band of these puritans, 
yielding to the might of their oppressors, and informal- 
ly associated at Nazing in the county of Essex, in Eng- 
land, agreed with Mr. John Eliot, who was about 
twenty-seven years of age, and had graduated at 
Jesus College in Cambridge University, eight years 
before, to be their teacher, guide and associate in 
the hazards, privations and difficulties of securing a 
retreat and home, and in organizing their community, 
in the wilderness of New England, "that we might 
afflict ourselves before God to seek of him a right 
way for us and for our little ones, and for all our 
substance." 

Nazing, the home of our fathers, around which 
were clustered the affections and remembrances of 
their youth, comprises the north-west corner of 
Waltham Half Hundred in Essex, and is situated on 
the east side of the river Lea, about 17 miles from 
London, bounded on the east and south by Waltham 
Abbey and Epping ; the village near the church, 
is small, and called Upper-Nazing ; about a mile dis- 

t Vauglian's History of England — pp. 45. 46. 275. 



7 

tant, at the bottom of the hill, on which the church 
stands, is a little hamlet, called Lower-Nazing. It 
was one of 17 lordships bestowed by Harold on his 
Abbey of Waltham Holy Cross. In Ogbourne's 
history of Essex, there is an elegant engraving of the 
ancient church, which was repaired in 1638, and is in 
fine preservation. 

There are several passages in the Apostle's records, 
of singular interest, being the only indication of the 
locality of the colonists in England, which has been 
preserved to us. They reflect a few scanty rays of 
light, back through more than two centuries, to the 
village chuch at Nazing, where were " many of the 
church enjoying society together," and gathering 
courage for the dark voyage across the Atlantic, and 
the untried perils of the western wilds, — driven 
away by the illiberal and unwise counsels of Arch- 
bishop Laud, whose memory, though he was a patron 
of learning, has little claim to the respect of those 
who wish well to the cause of religion and humanity. 

In recording f the deaths of two of their company 
in November of 1644, he added, " these two brake the 
knot first of the Nazing Christians, / meane 
they first died of those christians yt came from yt 
towne in En gland. ^^ One of these arrived in the 
spring of 1633, t and the other in 1637, the last of 
whom " joyned to the church soone after his coming, 
being as well known as was his " younger " brother § 
who came to N. E. in the year 1635, soone after 

t Eliot's chh. rec. fol. 467. + Fol. 37. § Fol. 41. 



8 

his coming joyned to the church, and was a lively 
christian, known to many of the church in old Eng- 
land, where many of the church enjoyed society to- 
gether. "-f These notes, also show, that the "Naz- 
ing Christians " did not come in one company, but 
left England at such times as they could escape, or 
circumstances would permit. It is certain that one 
of them did not arrive till the year 1637, and they 
probably continued to come as late as 1640, during a 
period of, at least, nine years. Their wills and other 
legal instruments show that they were, to a consider- 
able extent, connected by family ties and relationships 
in England, which renders it probable that Nazing 
may have been the place of their origin, and not 
merely a temporary residence. 

There is no presumptive evidence, that the Apostle 
Eliot was born there, other than his connection with 
the Nazing Christians, and the parish register does 
not contain the entry of his birth or baptism.:}: The 
distin^-uished Dr. Leusden of the University of 
Utrecht, dedicated a book to " the very reverend and 
and pious John Eliot, the indefatigable and faithful 
minister of the church of Ripen, being now in the 
84th year of his age, and Venerable Apostle of the 
Indians in America." Ripon is in Yorkshire. 

t Eliot's chh. rec. fol. 34. 

I The parish register at Nazing, contains an entry of th« 
baptism of John Eliot, in Feb. 1602, and in the register of 
burials of the same month and year, is the entry of John 
Eliot " infans." In 1610 and 1615, are entries of baptisms of 
" l.idia " and " Frances " Eliot. At St. Stephen's Middlesex, 
John, son of Richard Eliot, was baptized 7 April, 1602. — H. G. 

SOMERBY. 



9 

A portion of the company was soon gathered on 
these shores, and selected for their settlement, an 
elevated place, about three miles from Boston, which 
they called " Rocksbrough " or Rocksbury, as de- 
scriptive of the locality ; but their number was 
so small, at the first, that they "joyned to the 
church at Dorchester, untill such time as God should 
give them opportunity to be a church among them- 
selves."! 

Mr. Eliot arrived at Boston in the autumn of 1631, 
and ministered to the church there, in the temporary 
absence of their pastor, the Rev. Mr. Wilson, who 
was in England ; an engagement which occasioned 
some difficulty to his Roxbury friends about a year 
after, in July, 1632, when they had become suffi- 
ciently numerous to organize as a church, and were 
ready to fulfill the engagement made in England. 
The struggle between the Boston and Roxbury 
churches, to secure the ministry of Eliot, furnishes 
evidence of the early appreciation of his excellence. 
A statement of the case is in Eliot's brief account 
of himself, found in his register of the colonists, t 
which is interspersed with occasional biographical 
notes : "Mr. Eliot ; he came to N. E. in the 9th 
month, 1631. He left his intended wife in England, 
to come the next yeare, he adjoined to the church at 
Boston, and there exercised in the absens of Mr. Wil- 
son, the pastor of yt Church, who was gone back to 

t Apostle Eliot's church records, fol. 16. 
X Published in the appendix. 



10 

England for his wife and family. The next summer 
Mr. Wilson returned and by yt time the church at 
Boston was intended to call him to office, his friends 
wr come over and settled at Rocksbrough, to whom 
he was foreingaiged, yt, if he were not called to 
office before they came, he was to joyne wth them, 
whereupon the church at Rocksbrough called him 
to be Teacher in the end of yt summer and soone 
after he was ordained to yt office in the church. 
Also his wifcj came along wth the rest of his friends 
the same time and soone after theire comeing they 
were married, viz. in the 8th month, 1632. "f 

Winthrop says, " though Boston laboured all they 
could, both with the congregation of Roxbury and 
with ]Mr. Eliot himself, alleging their want of him 
and the covenant between them, &c., yet he could 
not be diverted from accepting the call of Roxbury, 
November 6th, so he was dismissed. t He was a 
passenger in the Lyon, William Pierce, master, 
which arrived at Nantasket, November 2d. There 
came in her, Winthrop's wife and family and others, 
being in all about sixty persons, who all arrived in 
good health, having been ten weeks at sea.§ 

Anna Rlumford, or Mountfort, Eliot's betrothed, 
came in the same vessel, probably, in which he 
crossed the Atlantic, and which cast anchor in Bos- 
ton harbor, on the evening of the Lord's day, Sep- 

t Eliot's Records, fol. 34. 

J Winthrop, I. 93. § Winthrop, I. 63—64. 



11 

tember 16th, having one hundred and tWenty-three 
passengers,t a portion of whom, doubtless^ eon* 
stituted an addition to the RoxbUry chufch, ahd in- 
fluenced his decision in their favor. 

In the manuscript volume of their simple ahnalS, 
written by their beloved Eliot, and now known as 
the Records of the First Church in Roxbury, are 
mentioned the dates of their arrivals in this country, 
some of them having remained in England several 
years after the departure of Eliot. 

Here they commenced the experiment of self- 
government, under the simplest forms of voluntary, 
civil and religious associations, the last of which 
controlled the whole. t 

Their ihatched meeting-house was on an eminence, 
ever since and still occupied for the same purpose, 
and where has ever been cherished the spirit of Christ- 
ian liberty which, John Robinson uttered in 1620 to 
the Plymouth Pilgrims on their embarkation at Delft- 
haven, '' Brethren we are now quickly to part from 
one another, and whether I may ever live to see 
your faces on earth any more, the God of Heaven only 
knows : but whether the Lord hath appointed that or 
not, I charge you before God and his blessed angels, 
that you follow me no farther than you have seen me 
follow the Lord Jesus Christ. If Gcd reveal any 
thing to you, by any other instrument of his, be as 
ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any 
truth by my ministry, for I am fully persuaded, I am 

t Winthrop, I. 30. + Ibid I. 70, 152, 178, 208. 



12 

Very confident, that the Lord has more truth yet to 
break forth out of his holy word." 

Who can Unut, in his imagination, the influences 
which have flowed from the gatherings of those few, 
earnest, working enthusiasts, in obscurity, poor and 
feeble ? What power, and strength were latent, 
in that band of fervent, praying, toiling outcasts as- 
sembled on that little eminence which overlooked the 
peninsula ? They were half conscious of the great 
result which was to follow their labours, and there 
and then defined and matured the means of producing 
it. The very earth is hallowed in the heart of him who 
contemplates the scene and its consequences. From 
a few similar settlements which dotted the shores of 
these wilds, has arisen the nation, whose prosperity 
has been, and safety is in obedience to the wisdom 
and precepts begotten in England and born here 
amidst poverty and hardship. 

On the 11th of September, 1635, Isaac Heath, at 
the matui'e age of fifty years, accompanied by his 
wife and daughter Elizabeth, a child five years old, 
*' imbarked in the Hopewell," Thomas Ball, master, 
for New England. " Hopewell " was an appropriate 
and felicitous name for the vessel which in several 
voyages brought many colonists to New England. 
Here he met his brother William, whom Eliot eu- 
logized as " able, godly and faithful," and who had 
arrived about three years before, bringing with him 
five children. He was a member of the first legisla- 
tive body convened in Massachusetts, 14th of May, 
1634. They had a brother Peleg Heath also of Rox 



13 

bury. Early in 1636)t he took the •* freetniah*8 
oath," and was elected by his townsmen to represent 
them in the legislature in 1637-8. About the same 
time he was chosen by them to the office of a " Rul- 
ing Elder," the highest honor that they could confer 
— a special recognition of his prudence, wisdom and 
godliness. This office placed him in intimate relation 
with Eliot, who consulted him in all his plans and 
difficulties, and to his zeal and worth bears frequent 
testimony, a portion of which will be given as matter 
of historical interest. The Rev. Samuel Sewall in 
his learned and accurate treatise^ on ancient ecclesi- 
astical usages, says that " a large proportion at least, 
of the first settlers in New England regarded the office 
of Ruling Elders, as of Divine institution, and ap* 
pealed to 1 Cor. xii. 28. and 1 Tim. v^ 17. as war.* 
ranting this persuasion. The title of these officers is 
descriptive of their rank and work in the church. 
They were Elders in common with the Pastor and 
Teacher : and as it was their duty to assist the 
teaching officers or officer in ruling or conducting 
the spiritual affiiirs of the church, (in admitting-, 
for instance, or excluding members, inspecting their 
lives and conversations, preventing or healing offen- 
ces, visiting the sick, and administering occasionally 
a word of admonition or exhortation to the congre- 
gation,) they obtained the name of Ruling Elders : 
whereas Pastors and Teachers, by way of dis- 

t Hist. Gen. Reg. III. 94, II. 104, 105. 
I American Quarterly Reg. August, 1840, pages 40, 41> 
2 



14 
tinction were sometimes called Teaching Elders, 
because it was eminently their duty to teach, or 
minister the word. Ruling Elders were anciently 
ordained and were sometimes addressed by the 
appellation of Reverend. The place of the Rul- 
ing Elders in the congregation was an elevated 
seat between the Deacon's seat and the pulpit." 
Bishop Burnet saysf that the " Ruling Elders were 
taken from the Geneva pattern, to assist, or rather 
to be a check on the ministers, in the managing the 
parochial discipline," and in 1638, they became 
part of the Scottish ecclesiastical assemblies. It 
was customary with us, for many years, for the 
legislature, or public authorities, to summon the 
Elders to consult upon public affairs, as for instance, 
in 1646, when they were convened in relation to the 
Indian affairs. Mr. Heath continued in this office 
during his life. 

There is a curious memorandum signed by him and 
John StoWj about 1639, " to pay Goodwife Burt for her 
boy ye full tyme that he did keepe the goats and 
kidds " to secure their safety. In " a note of ye es-* 
tates and persons of ye Inhabitants of Roxbury," 
made about 1640, he and Thomas Bell appear to 
have been among the wealthiest men, and about 60 
goats and 20 kids, were the whole of the flocks be- 
longing to the settlement. 

The agreement with a subscription to raise a school 
fund, the beginning of the free school in Roxbury, 

t Hist, of his own times. London. 1850. I. 20. 



15 

was made Aug. 31, 1645. The agreement recites that 
*• Whereas, the inhabitants of Roxburie out of their 
religious care of posteritie, have taken into consider- 
ation how necessarie the education of theire children 
in literature will be to fit them for public service both 
in Church and Commonwealthe in succeeding ages, 
They, therefore, unanimously have consented and 
agreed to erect a free school e in the said Town of 
Roxburie and to allow twenty pounds per annum to 
the Schoolmaster to be raised out of the messuages 
and part of the lands of the several donors (inhabi- 
tants of the said town) in several proportions as 
hereafter followeth under their hands. And for the 
well ordering thereof they have chosen and selected 
seven feoffees who shall have power to put in or 
remove the schoolmaster, to see to the well order- 
ing of the schoole and scholars, to receive and pay 
the said twenty pounds per annum to the school- 
master and to dispose of any other gifte or giftes 
which hereafter may or shall be given for the ad- 
vancement of learning and education of children." 
Ellis' history of Roxbury, pages 35-9, contains the 
document complete and all of the donors' names. 

To put the existence and permanence of the school 
beyond all hazard, on the eighteenth day of Decem- 
ber, 1646, Tho. Dudley, Thos. Weld, John Eliot, 
Isaac Heath, Isaac and John Johnson, Thomas 
Gardner and eight others agreed " for themselves 
severally, and their severall and respective heirs 
and executors that not only their houses, but also 



16 

their yardsy orchards, gardenings, outhouses and 
homesteads shall be and are hereby bound and be 
made liable to and for the severall yearly sums and 
rents," exhibiting a degree of public spirit and devo- 
tion, the more remarkable, when we consider their 
poverty and the struggles for existence which they 
were then making. Their generous sacrifices in the 
cause of education should secure our appreciation of 
the blessings they gave us, and their far reaching 
providence, command our public acknowledgment. 
The city in some suitable manner, should give its 
official testimony to the value of their services by 
making the name of each Founder of the school fami- 
liar to the sight and memory of the successive gen- 
erations, who by their gifts enjoy opportunities of 
education, without money and without price. Elder 
Heath's portion of the public domain was among the 
largest, and by his will written a short time before 
his death, he gave the whole of it " to ye school in 
Roxburie," in addition to what he had contributed 
in common with his townsmen fourteen years before. 
The importance the fathers attached to common 
schools, and the exalted rank attained by that of 
Roxbury, appears by a passage in Cotton Mather's 
life of Eliot. It was " his perpetual resolution and 
activity to support a good school in the town that 
belonged unto him. A grammar school he would 
always have upon the place, whatever it cost him ; 
and he importuned all other places to have the like. 
I cannot forget the ardour with which I once heard 



17 

him pray, in a synod of these churches, which met 
at Boston to consider how the miscarriages which 
were among us might be prevented ; I say with 
what fervor he uttered an expression to this purpose : 
' Lord, for schools every where among us ! That 
our schools may flourish ! That every member of 
this assembly may go home and procure a good 
school to be encouraged in the town where he lives ! 
That before we die, we may be so happy as to see 
a good school encouraged in every plantation of the 
country.' God so blessed his endeavors, that Rox- 
bury could not live quietly without a free school in 
the town ; and the issue of it has been one thing, 
which has almost made me put the title of Schola 
Illustris,i upon that little nursery ; that is, that Rox- 
bury has afforded more scholars, first for the coUedge 
and then for the public, than any town of its bigness, 
or if I mistake not of twice its bigness in all New 
England. From the spring of the school at Roxbury, 
there have run a large number of the streams, which 
have made glad this whole city of God. I persuade 
myself that the good people of Roxbury, will for 
ever scorn to begrutch the cost, or to permit the 
death of a school which God has made such an 
honor to them ; and this the rather, because their 
deceased Eliot has left them a fair part of his estate, 
for the maintaining of the school in Roxbury ; and 

t Among the graduates from Roxbury were the Dudleys, 
Eliets, Bowles, Walters, Tompsoiis, Danforths, Paysons, 
Pierponts, Welds, Graves, and others. — Har. Col. Cata- 
logue. 

2* 



18 

I hope, or at least, I wish, that the ministers of 
New England may be as ungainsayably importunate 
with their people, as Mr. Eliot was with his, for 
schools which may seasonably tinge the yoang soules 
of the rising: generation. A want of edacation for 
them, is the blackest and saddest of all the bad 
omens that are upon us."t 

The probate records in Suffolk, which then in- 
cluded Norfolk county, contain frequent mention of 
Elder Heath's name, as "overseer," executor or 
trustee, offices which, in their nature, are perpetual 
memorials of the special reliance of his fellow men on 
his integrity, prudence and friendship, a confidence 
which he never violated by dishonorable artifice for 
selfish ends or abused for his own probable or pros- 
pective advantage. 

Elder Heath, R. Russell, and Edward Tyng, were 
three lay members of a council held at Boston, Sep- 
tember 26, 1659, concerning the long, sad and afflict- 
ing controvesy between the Rev. preacher, Mr. 
Samuel Stone, the honored and dearly beloved breth- 
ren of the church of Hartford, on the one part, and 
the honored dearly beloved brethren, the withdrawers 
from the said church on the other part, since the 
relapse after the pacification. May 3d, 1657. "t 

Elder Heath's official connection with the Apostle 

f Magiialia Christi Americana. 

+ Winthrop, I. 142. 1657, "2 m. Certaiiie Elders and 
other Messengers of ye churches in ye Bay went to Hart- 
ford and endeavoured to compose ye diifences betw. ye church 
there and ye dissenting Brethren." — Eliot's Ch. Rec. 



19 

Eliot in the church, and their personal intimacy will, 
at once, suggest the probability of his interest in the 
Christian efforts to civilize and evangelize the In- 
dians. 

If it can be established, that the Apostle was the 
author of the tract entitled "The Day-breaking, if 
not the Sun-Rising of the Gospel among the Indians 
in New England," London, 1647, as stated by the 
publishing committee of the 24th volume of the Mas- 
sachusetts historical society's collections, in which 
the tract is reprinted, there is almost conclusive evi- 
dence, that Elder Heath preached to the Indians in 
their own language. The author of the narrative 
says, in his account of " a third meeting with the 
Indians," November 26, 1646, " I could notgoem}r- 
self, but heard from those who went, of a third meet- 
ing," and that " the preacher spake unto them," by 
which it appears, that Eliot was not the author of 
the tract, or that there was another person who could 
preach to them, and the story of Wampas or Wam- 
poras, as related on pages 18 and 166-7, of the 
"collections," both tend to show that Elder Heath was 
the man, a theory which is strengthened by further ev- 
idence in the same volume, and elicits fewer discrep- 
ancies than does that of attributing the authorship to 
Eliot. 

Eliot's character for modesty, forbids the idea that 
he ever wrote respecting himself the following lan- 
guage on the twenty-first page of the " collections : " 
" Hee that God hath raised up and enabled to preach 



20 

unto them, is a man (you know) of a most sweet, 
humble, loving, gratious and enlarged spirit, whom 
God hath blest and surely will still delight in and 
do good by." The inference, equal to a positive 
statement is, that only one was able to preach to the 
Indians, and Winthrop, when present at one of the 
meetings, in 1646, " heard one of our elders, Mr. 
John Eliot, preach, "f 

No " eminently godly and faithful minister" was 
more favorably located to be an " eye and eare wit- 
ness," as Ward styles the author of the tract, than 
the Rev. Thomas Shepard of Cambridge, whose cor- 
respondence is a chief source of information relating 
to these early movements. 

"New England's First Fruits," a small quarto 
tract of twenty-six pages, published in London, in 
1643, contains " the testimony of Mr. Sh., a godly 
minister in the Bay," respecting " Wequash :{: the 
famous Indian at the river's mouth," who was 
"dead and certainly in heaven." Doubtless Mr. 
jS/ieppard was the man who was sending an account of 
some of the " first fruits " of their labors among them, 
about three years before the date of the tract of 
1646. The title of this tract, the " Clear Sunshine 
of the Gospel," as well as its introductory pages, 
favor the idea that he was the author of the previous 
tract, "the Day Breaking if not the Sun Rising of 
the Gospel." 

t Wiiithrop's Hist, of Mass. II. 297. 

+ Drake's "Book of the Indians," Book II, ch. VI., p. 105. 



21 

The four who went on the memorable first visit 
to Nonantum, were, probably, Eliot, Gookin, 
Heath, and Shepard.! Daniel Gookin, the his- 
torian of the Indians, was the life-long companion 
of Eliot, of whom he says : 

" I being his neighbor and intimate friend, at the 
time when he first attempted this enterprise, he was 
pleased to communicate unto me the design and the 
motives that induced him thereunto." To the be- 
nevolent and enlightened Gookin, the thought at 
once commended itself. He wrote, " those that 
labor in this harvest, are first to endeavor to learn 
perfectly that first lesson in Christ's school, I mean 
self-denial. Secondly, to keep the eye of faith fixed 
upon God, whose work it is, who will never fail to 
recompense either here, or hereafter, all that work in 
his harvest. Indeed, if he please to employ and 
accept us in Christ Jesus, it is a sufficient reward. 
The principles and motives thereunto were, through 
grace, of higher alloy than gold, yea, than fine gold." 
" Many [were our] weary journies among them 
yearly, aud under sundry trials, forced to lodge in 
their woods and wigwams." 

Isaac Heath was Eliot's official adviser and assist- 
ant, the venerable elder of more than three score 
years of age, whose participations in these labors will 
appear in the following narrative. Thomas Shep- 
ard was the minister of Cambridge, and " an eye 
and ear witness " of all these things. Their path 

tAged42, 34, 61,41. 



22 

was through the forest, to a place about four miles 
distant from the village of Roxbury, on the south 
side of Charles river, on the present Kenrick 
estate in Newton. It was in a w^arm, sheltered 
valley, and near by issued an abundant supply of 
living water from a fountain which is still noted as 
" the spring." 

"The Indians did desire to know what name it 
should have, and it was told them it should be called 
Noonatomen, which signifies in English rejoycing, 
because they hearing the words and seeking to know 
God, the English did rejoice at it, and God did re- 
joice at it, which pleased them much, and therefore 
that is to be the name of their town." The Rev. 
Samuel Danforth, afterward, Eliot's colleague, says 
that " much illumination and sweet affection was 
in a short time wrought in divers of them and a 
hopeful reformation begun, in abandoning idleness, 
filthyness, and other known sines, and in offering up 
themselves and their children to the English freely 
and gladly, that they might be the better instructed 
in ye things of God."t 

Here was gathered the first Christian Indian 
Church in English America. What fitter shrine for 
the devotions of the successors of those venerable 
pioneers, than the valley where the " glad tidings " 
first broke on the ear of the American savage. t 
The spirit of the Christian zeal and patience of these 

t Rev S. Sewall in Am. Quar. Reg. Feb. 1839, 262. 
I It was their first assembly for that purpose. 



23 

pioneer missionaries, which is breathed into theli* 
graphic and simple narratives,! can be but feebly 
exhibited in the few extracts here given : 

*' t Upon October 28. 1646. four of us (having 
sought God) went unto the Indians inhabiting within 
our bounds, with desire to make known the things of 
their peace to them. A little before we came to 
their Wigioams, five or six of the chief of them met 
us with English salutations, bidding us much wel- 
come ; who leading us into the principall Wigwam 
of Waaubon, we found many more Indians, men, 
women, children, gathered together from all quarters 
round about, according to appointment, to meet 
with us, and learne of us. Waaubon the chief min- 
ister of Justice among them exhorting and inviting 
them before thereunto, being one who gives more 
grounded hopes of serious respect to the things of 
God, than any that as yet I have knowne of that for- 
lorne generation ; and therefore since wee first began 
to deale seriously with him, hath voluntarily offered 
his eldest son to be educated and trained up in the 
knowledge of God, hoping, as bee told us, that bee 
might come to know him, although bee despaired 
much concerning himself ; and accordingly his son 
was accepted, and is now in school at Dedham, 
whom we found at this time standing by his father 
among the rest of his Indian brethren in English 
clothes. 

t Reprinted in the 24th volume of Mass. Hist. Col. 
X Title of the tract is in the appendix, I. 



24 

They being all assembled, we began with prayer, 
Vvhich now was in English, being not so farre ac- 
quainted with the Indian language as to expresse our 
hearts herein before God or them, but wee hope it 
will be done ere long, the Indians desiring it that 
they also might know how to pray ; but thus wee 
began in an unknowne tongue to them, partly to let 
them know that this dutie in hand was serious and 
sacred, (for so much some of them understand by 
what is undertaken at prayer) partly also in regard 
of ourselves, that we might agree together in the 
same request and heart sorrowes for them even in 
that place where God was never wont to be called 
upon. 

When prayer was ended it was a glorious affect- 
ing spectacle to see a company of perishing, forlorne 
outcasts, diligently attending to the blessed word of 
salvation then delivered ; professing they understood 
all that which was then taught them in their owne 
tongue ; it much affected us that they should smell 
some things of the Alabaster box broken up in that 
darke and gloomy habitation of filthinesse and un- 
cleane spirits. For about an hour and a quarter the 
Sermon continued, wherein one of our company ran 
through all the principall matter of religion, begin- 
ning first with a repetition of the ten Commandments, 
and a briefe explication of them, then shewing the 
curse and dreadful wrath of God against all those who 
brake them, or any one of them, or the least title of 
them, and so applyed it unto the condition of 



25 

the Indians present, with much sweet affection ; 
and then preached Jesus Christ to them the on- 
ley meanes of recovery from sinne and wrath 
and eternal! death, and what Christ was, and whither 
he was now gone, and how hee will one day come 
againe to judge the world in flaming fire ; and of the 
blessed estate of all those that by faith beleeve in 
Christ, and know him feelingly : he spake to them 
also (observing his own method as he saw most fit to 
edifie them) about the creation and fall of man, about 
the greatnesse and infinite being of God, the maker 
of all things, about the joyes of heaven and the ter- 
rours and horrours of wicked men in hell, perswading 
them to repentance for severall sins which they live 
in, and many things of the like nature ; not medling 
with any matters more difficult, and which to such 
weake ones might at first seeme ridiculous, untill they 
had tasted and believed more plane and familiar truths. 
Having thus in a set speech familiarly opened the 
principal matters of salvation to them, the next 
thing wee intended was discourse with them by 
propounding certaine questions to see what they would 
say to them, that soe wee might slo-ue by variety of 
meanes something or other of God into them ; but 
before we did this we asked them if they understood 
all that which was already spoken, and whether all 
of them in the Wigwam did understand or onely 
some few ? and they answered to this question with 
multitude of voyces, that they all of them did under- 
stand all that which was then spoken to them. 
3 



26 

One of them said to us, "that hee was a little 
while since praying in his Wigwam, unto God and 
Jesus Christ, that God would give him a good heart, 
and that while hee was praying, one of his fellow 
Indians interrupted him, and told him, that hee 
prayed in vaine, because Jesus Christ understood 
not what Indians speake in prayer, he had bin used 
to heare English man pray and so could well 
enough understand them, but Indian language in 
prayer hee thought hee was not acquainted with it, 
but was a stranger to it, and therefore could not un- 
derstand them. His question therefore was, whether 
Jesus Christ did understand, or God did understand 
Indian prayers. 

This question sounding just like themselves, wee 
studied to give as familiar an answer as wee could, 
and therefore in this as in all other our answers, we 
endeavoured to speake nothing without clearing of it 
up by some familiar similitude ; our answer summa- 
rily was therefore this, that Jesus Christ and God 
by him made all things, and makes all men, not 
onely English but Indian men, and if hee made 
them both (which wee know the light of nature 
would readily teach as they had been also instructed 
by us) then hee knew all that was within man and 
came from man, all his desires, and all his thoughts, 
and all his speeches, and so all his prayer ; and if 
hee made India?i men, then hee knowes all Indian 
.prayers also : and therefore wee bid them looke 
upon that Indian Basket that was before them, there 



27 

was black and white strawes, and many other things 
they made it of, now though others did not know 
what those things were who made not the Basket, 
yet hee that made it must needs tell all the things in 
it, so (wee said) it was here. 

Thus after three houres time thus spent with 
them, wee asked them if they were not weary, and 
they answered. No. But wee resolved to leave 
them with an appetite ; the chiefs of them seeing us 
conclude with prayer, desired to loiow when wee 
would come againe, so wee appointed the time, and 
having given the children some apples, and the men 
some tobacco and what else we then had at hand, 
they desired some more ground to build a Town to- 
gether, which wee did much like of, promising to 
speake for them to the generall Court, that they 
might possesse all the compass of that hill, upon 
which their Wigwams then stood, and so wee de- 
parted with many welcomes from them." 

" Vpon JVovember 11. 1646. we came the second 
time unto the same Wigwam of Waaubon, where 
we found many more Indians met together then the 
first time wee came to them : and having seates pro- 
vided for ns by themselves, and being sate downe 
a while, wee began againe with prayer in the 
English tongue ; our beginning this time was with 
younger sort of Indian children in Catechizing of 
them, which being the first time of instructing them, 
we thought meet to aske them but only three ques- 
tions in their own language, that we might not clog 



28 

their mindes or memories with too much at first, the 
questions (asked and answered in the Indian tongue) 
were these three. 1. Qw. Who made you and all the 
world ? Answ. God. 2. Qu. Who doe you looke 
shoulde save you and redeeme you from sinne and 
hell ? Ansio. Jesus Christ. 3. Qu. How many 
commandments hath God given you to keepe ? Answ. 
Ten. These questions being propounded to the 
Children severally, and one by one, and the answers 
being short and easie, hence it came to passe that 
before wee went thorow all, those who were last 
catechized had more readily learned to answer to 
them, by hearing the question so oft propounded and 
answered before by their fellowes : and the other In- 
dians who were growne up to more yeares had per- 
fectly learned them, whom wee therefore desired to 
teach their children againe when wee were absent, 
that so when wee came againe wee might see their 
profiting, the better to encourage them hereunto, wee 
therefore gave something to every childe. 

This Catechisme being soone ended, hee that 
preached to them, began thus (speaking to them in 
their own language) viz. Wee are come to bring 
you good newes from the great God Almighty maker 
of Heaven and Earth, and to tell you how evill and 
wicked men may come to bee good, so as while they 
live they may bee happy, and when they die they 
may goe to God and live in Heaven. 

Various questions were proposed by the Indians, 
One ** asked whether it was not too late for such an 



29 

old man as hee who was neare to death to repent or 
seeke after God;" another inquired "how come 
the English to differ so mueh from the Indians in the 
knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, seeing they 
all had at first but one father ? ' ' Other ques- 
tions were " how comes it to passe that the sea 
water was salt, and the land water was fresh?" 
And " if the water was higher than the earth, how 
comes it to passe that it doth not overflow all the 
earth? " 

"Having thus spent the whole afternoone, and night 
being almost come upon us : considering that the In- 
dians formerly desired to know how to pray, and did 
thinke that Jesus Christ did not understand Indian 
language, one of us therefore prepared to pray in 
their own language, and did so for above a quarter 
of an houre together, wherein divers of them held up 
eies and hands to heaven ; all of them (as we under- 
stood afterwards) understanding the same ; but one 
of them I cast my eye upon, was hanging downe his 
head with his rag before his eyes weeping ; at first 1 
feared it was some sorenesse of his eyes, but lifting 
up his head againe, having wiped his eyes (as not 
desirous to be seene) I easily perceived his eyes 
were not sore, yet somewhat red with crying ; and 
so held up his head for a while, yet such was the 
presence and mighty power of the Lord Jesus on 
his heart that hee hung down his head againe, and 
covered his eyes againe and so fell wiping and wip- 
ing of them weeping abundantly, continuing thus till 



30 

prayer was ended, after which hee presently turnes 
his face to a side and corner of the Wigwam, and 
there fals a weeping more aboundantly by himselfe, 
which one of us perceiving, went to him, and spake 
to him encouraging words ; at the hearing of 
which hee fell a weeping more and more ; so leaving 
of him, he who spake to him came unto mee (being 
newly gone out of the Wigwam) and told mee of his 
teares, so we resolved to goe againe both of us to 
him, and speake to him againe, and wee met him 
comming out of the Wigwam, and there wee spake 
againe to him, and he there fell into a more abun- 
dant renewed weeping, like one deeply and inwardly 
affected indeed, which forced us also to such bowels 
of compassion that wee could not forbeare weeping 
over him also : and so wee parted greatly rejoycing 
for such sorrowing. 

Thus I have as faithfully as I could remember 
given you a true account of our beginnings with the 
Indians within our owne bounds ; which cannot but 
bee a matter of more serious thoughts what further 
to doe with these poore Natives the dregs of mankinde 
and the saddest spectacles of misery of meere men 
upon earth: wee did thinke to forbeare going to 
them this winter, but this last dayes worke wherein 
God set his seale from heaven of acceptance of our 
little, makes those of us who are able, to resolve to 
adventure thorow frost and snow, lest the fire goe out 
of their hearts for want of a little more fewell : to 
which we are the more incouraged,in that the next day 



31 

after our being with them, one of the Indians came 
to his t house who preacht to them to speake with 
him, who in private conference wept exceedingly, 
and said that all that night the Indians could not 
sleepe, partly with trouble of minde, and partly with 
wondring at the things they heard preacht amongst 
them ; another Indian comming also to him the next 
day after, told him how many of the wicked sort of 
Indians began to oppose these beginnings. 

JVovember 26. I could not goe my selfe, but 
heard from those who went, of a third meeting ; the 
Indians having built more Wigwams in the wonted 
place of meeting to attend upon the Word the more 
readily. The preacher understanding how many of 
the Indians discouraged their fellowes in this worke, 
and threatening death to some if they heard any more, 
spake therefore unto them, about temptations of the 
Devill, how hee tempted to all manner of sinne, and 
how the evill heart closed with them, and how a 
good heart abhorred them ; the Indians were this day 
more serious than ever before, and propounded divers 
questions againe ; as 1. Because some Indians say 
that we must pray to the Devill for all good, and 
some to God ; they would know whether they might 
pray to the Devill or no. 2. They said they heard 
the word humiliation oft used in our Churches, and 
they would know what that meant ? 3. Why the 
English call them Indians, because before they 
came they had another name ? 4. What a Spirit is ? 

t Apostle Eliot. 



32 

5. Whether they should beleeve Dreames ? 6. How 
the English come to know God so much and they so 
little ? To all which they had fit answers ; but be- 
ing not present I shall not set them downe : onely 
their great desire this time was to have a place for a 
Towne and to learne to spinne. 

The Lord Jesus will have you see more of his con- 
quests and triumphes among these forlorne and degen- 
erate people ; surely hee heares the prayers of the 
destitute and that have long lien downe in the dust 
before God for these poore prisoners of the pit : 
surely some of these American tongues and knees 
must confesse him, and bow downe before him ; for 
the Saturday night after this third meeting (as I am 
informed from the man of Godf who then preached to 
them) there came to his house one JVampas a wise 
and sage Indian as a messenger sent to him from the 
rest of the company, to offer unto him his owne sonne:J: 
and three more Indian children to bee trained up 
among the English, one of the children was nine 
years old, another eight, another five, another foure : 
and being demanded why they would have them 
brought up amongst the English, his answer 
was, because they would grow rude and wicked 
at home, and would never come to know God, which 
they hoped they should doe if they were constantly 
among the English. 

t Apostle Eliot. 

X His son was received by Elder Heath, and continued with 
him more than four years. 



33 

This Wampas came also accompanied with two 
more Indians, young lusty men, who offered them- 
selves voluntarily to the service of the English that 
by dwelling in some of their families, they might 
come to know Jesus Christ ; these are two of those 
three men whom wee saw weeping, and whose 
hearts were smitten at our second meeting above 
mentioned, and continue still much affected, and 
give great hopes ; these two are accepted of and re- 
ceived into two of the Elders houses, but the child- 
ren are not yet placed out because it is most meet 
to doe nothing that way too suddainly, but they have 
a promise of acceptance and education of them either 
in learning or in some other trade of life in time con- 
venient, to which Wampas replyed that the Indians 
desired nothing more. 

'Tis wonderfuU in our eyes to understand what 
Prayers Waaubon and the rest of them use to make, 
for hee that preacheth to them professeth hee never 
yet used any of their words in his prayers, from 
whom otherwise it might bee thought that they had 
learnt them by rote, one is this. 

Amanaomen Jehovah tahassen metagh~_ 
Take away Lord my stony heart ,^ 

Another. 

Chechesom Jehovah kekowhogkow^ 
Wash Lord my soule. 

Another. 

Lord lead mee when I die to heaveH:, 



34 

These are but a taste, they have many more, and 
these more enlarged then thus expressed, yet what 
are these but the sprinklings of the spirit and blood 
of Christ Jesus in their hearts ? and 'tis no small 
matter that such dry barren and long accursed ground 
should yeeld such kind of increase in so small a 
time. I would not readily commend a faire day be- 
fore night, nor promise much of such kind of begin- 
nings, in all persons, nor yet in all of these, for wee 
know the profession of very many is but a meere 
paint, and their best graces nothing but meere flashes 
and pangs, which are suddenly kindled and as soone 
go out and are extinct againe, yet God doth not 
usually send his Plough and Seedsman to a place 
but there is at least some little peece of good ground, 
although three to one bee naught : and mee thinkes 
the Lord Jesus would never have made so fit a key 
for their locks, unlesse hee had intended to open 
some of their doores, and so to make way for his 
comming in. Hee that God hath raised up and 
enabled to preach unto them, is a man (you know) 
of a most sweet, humble, loving, gratious and en- 
larged spirit, whom God hath blest, and surely will 
still delight in, & do good by. 

In the autumn of 1650, the Apostle says : t "the 
present work of the Lord that is to be done among 
them, is to gather them together from their scattered 
kinde of life ; First, into Civil Society, then to 
Ecclesiastical, and both by the Divine direction of 

t Mass. Hist. Coll. XXIV. 137—142. 



35 

the Word of the Lord ; they are still earnestly de- 
sirous of it ; and this Spring that is past, they were 
very importunately desirous to have been put upon 
that work, and to have planted come in the place 
intended ; but I did disswade, and was forced to use 
this reason of delay, because I hoped for tools, and 
means from England, whereby to prosecute the 
work this Summer. But when ships came, and no 
supply, you may easily think what a damping it 
was ; and truly my heart smote me, that I had look- 
ed too much at man and meanes, in stoping their 
earnest affections with that barre which proved a 
Blank. I began without any such respect, and I 
thought that the Lord would have me so to go on, 
and only look to him for help, whose work it is ; 
and when I had thus looked up to the Lord, I ad- 
vised with our Elders and some other of our Church, 
whose hearts consented with me ; then I advised 
with divers of the Elders at Boston Lecture, and 
Mr. Cotton's answer was, my heart say eth, go on, 
and look to the Lord onely for help, the rest also 
concurring ; So I commended it to our Church, and 
we sought God in a day of fasting and prayer about 
it, (together with other causes) and have been ever 
since a doing, according to our abilities ; and this 
I account a favor of God, that that very night, be- 
fore we came from our place of meeting, we had 
notice of a Ship from England, whereby I received 
Letters, and some encouragement in the work from 
private friends ; a mercy which God had in store, 



36 

but unknown to some, and so contrived by the Lord, 
that I should receive it as a fruit of prayer. 

The place is also of God's providing, as a fruit of 
prayer ; for when I, with some that went with me, 
had rode to a place of some hopefull expectation, 
when we came to it, it was in no wise sutable ; I 
went behind a Rock, and looked to the Lord, and 
committed the matter to him ; and while I was trav- 
elling in Woods, Christian friends were in prayer at 
home ; and so it was, that though one of our com- 
pany fell sick in the Woods, so that we were forced 
home with speed ; yet in the way home, the Indians 
in our company, upon enquiry describing a place to 
rae, and guiding us over some part of it, the Lord 
did both by his providence then, and by after more 
diligent search of the place, discover that there it 
was his pleasure we should begin this work. When 
grasse was fit to cut, I sent some Indians to mow, 
and others to make some hay at the place, because 
we must oft ride thither in the Autumn when grasse 
is withered and dead, and especially in the Spring 
before any grasse is come, and there is provision for 
our horses ; this work was performed well, as I 
found when I went up to them with my man to order 
it. We must of necessity have an house to lodge 
in, meet in, and lay up our provisions and clothes, 
which cannot be in Wigwams. I set them there- 
fore to fell and square timber for an house, and 
when it was ready, I went, and many of them with 
me, and on their shoulders carried all the timber 



37 

together, &c. These things they chearfully do ; but 
this also I do, I pay them wages carefully for all such 
works I &et them about, which is a good encourage- 
ment to labour. I purpose, God willing, to call 
them together this Autumne to break and prepare 
their own ground against the Spring, and for other 
necessary works, which are not afew, in such an en- 
terprize. There is a great river which divideth be- 
tween their planting grounds and dwelling place, 
through which, though they easily wade in Summer, 
yet in the Spring its deep, and unfit for daily passing 
over, especially of women and children ; therefore I 
thought it necessary, that this Autumne we should 
make a foot Bridge over, against such time in the 
Spring as they shall have daily use of it ; I told them 
my purpose and reason of it, wished them to go with 
me to do that work, which they chearfully did, and 
with their own hands did build a Bridge eighty foot 
long, and nine foot high in the midst, that it might 
stand above the floods ; when we had done, I cald 
them together, prayed, and gave thanks to God, and 
taught them out of a portion of Scripture, and at part- 
ing I told them, I was glad of their readinesse to la- 
bour, when I advised them thereunto ; and in as 
much as it hath been hard and tedious labour in the 
water, if any of them desired wages for their work, I 
would give it them ; yet being it is for their owne use 
if they should do all this labour in love, I should take 
it well, and as I may have occasion, remember it ; 
they answered me, they were farre from desiring any 
4 



38 

wages when they do their own work ; but on the 
other side they were thankful to me that I had called 
them, and counselled them in a work so needful for 
them, whereto I replyed, I was very glad to see them 



so ingenuous. 



This businesse of praying to God (for that is their 
general name of Religion) hath hitherto found oppo- 
sition only from the Pawwawes and profane spirits ; 
but now the Lord hath exercised us with another and 
a greater opposition ; for the Sachems of the Country 
are generally set against us, and counter-work the 
Lord by keeping off their men from praying to God 
as much as they can ; And the reason of it is this, 
They plainly see that Religion will make a great 
change among them, and cut them off from their 
former tyranny ; for they used to hold their people 
in an absolute servitude, insomuch as what eVer they 
had, and themselves too were at his command ; his 
language was, as one said, {omne meum;) now they 
see that Religion teaches otherwise, and puts a bridle 
upon such usurpations ; Besides their former manner 
was, that if they wanted money, or if they desire 
any thing from a man, they would take occasion to 
rage and be in a great anger ; which when they did 
perceive, they would give him all they had to pacifie 
him ; for else their way was to suborne some villain 
(of which they have no lack) to find some opportu- 
nity to kill him ; This keeps ihem in great awe of 
their Sachems, and is one reason why none of them 
desire any wealth, only from hand to mouth, because 



39 

they are but servants, and they get not for them- 
selves ; But now if their Sachem so rage, and give 
sharp and cruell language, instead of seeking his 
favour with gifts (as formerly) they will admonish 
him of his sinne ; tell him that is not the right way 
to get money ; but he must labour, and then he may 
have money, that is Gods command, &c. And as 
for Tribute, some they are willing to pay, but not as 
formerly. Now these are great temptations to the 
Sachems, and they had need of a good measure both 
of wisdome and grace to swallow this Pill, and it 
hath set them quite off ; And I suppose that hence it 
is, that (I having requested the Court of Commis- 
sioners for a general way to be thought of to instruct 
all the Indians in all parts, and I told the Indians 
that I did so, which they would soon spread ; and 
still in my prayers, I pray for the Mo7iohegens, JVar- 
ragansets, ^c.) the Monohegen Indians were much 
troubled lest the Court of Commissioners should take 
some course to teach them to pray to God ; and 
Unkus their Sachem went to Hartford this Court 
(for there they sate) and expressed to Elder Good- 
win his feare of such a thing, and manifested a great 
unwillingness thereunto ; this one of our Commissi- 
oners told me at his coming home. 

This temptation hath much troubled Cutshamo- 
quin our Sachem, and he was raised in his spirit to 
such an height, that at a meeting after Lecture, he 
openly contested with me against our proceeding to 
make a town ; and plainly told me that all the Sa- 



40 

chems in the country were against it, &c. When he 
did so carry himself, all the Indians were filled with 
fear, their countenances grew pale, and most of them 
slunk away, a few stayed, and I was alone, not any 
English man with me ; But it pleased God (for it 
was his guidance of me, and assistance) t& raise up 
my spirit, not to passion, but to a bold resolution , 
telling him it was Gods work I was about, and he 
was with me, and I feared not him, nor all the Sa-^ 
ehems in the Country, and I was resolved to go on 
do what they can, and they nor he should hinder that 
which I had begun, &c. And it pleased God that his 
spirit shrunk and fell before me, which when those 
Indians that tarried saw, they smiled as they durst, 
out of his sight, and have been much strengthened 
ever since ; and since I understand that in such con- 
flicts their manner is, that they account him that 
shrinks to be conquered, and the other to conquer ; 
which alas I knew not, nor did I aime at such a 
matter, but the Lord carried me beyond my thoughts 
and wont ; after this brunt was over, I took my leave 
to go home, and Cutshamoquin went a little way 
with me, and told that the reason of this trouble was, 
because the Indians that pray to God, since they 
have so done, do not pay him tribute as formerly 
they have done ; I answered him that once before 
when I heard of his complaint that way, I preached 
on that text, Give unto CcBsar what is CcBsars and 
unto God what is Gods ; and also on Rom. 13.. 
naming him the matter of the texts (not the places of 



41 

which he is ignorant.) But he said its true, I taught 
them well, but they would not in that point do as I 
taught them ; And further he said, this thing are all 
the Sachems sensible of, and therefore set themselves 
against praying to God ; and then I was troubled, 
lest (if they should be sinfully unjust) they should 
both hinder and blemish the Gospel and Religion ; 
I did therefore consult with the Magistrates and Mr. 
Cotton and other Elders ; Mr. Cottons text by Gods 
providence, the next Lecture gave him occasion to 
speak to it, which I fore-knowing advised some that 
understood English best, to be there ; and partly by 
what they heard, and by what I had preached to the 
like purpose, and told them what Mr. Cotton said, 
&c. they were troubled, and fell to reckon up what 
they had done in two yeers past, a few of them that 
lived at one of the places I preached unto ; I took 
down the particulars in writing, as foUoweth. At 
one time they gave him twenty bushels of corne, at 
another time more than sLxe bushels ; two hunting 
dayes they killed him fifteen Deeres ; they brake up 
for him two Acres of Land, they made for him a 
great house or Wigwam, they made twenty rod of 
fence for him, with a Ditch and two Railes about it, 
they paid a debt for him of 3. li. 10. s. only some 
others were contributors in this money ; one of them 
gave him a skin of Beaver of two pound, at his re- 
turn from building, besides many dayes works in 
planting corne altogether, and some severally ; yea 
they said they would willingly do more if they would 
4* 



42 

govern well by justice, and as the word of God 
taught them ; when I heard all this, I wondered, for 
this Cometh to neere 30. li. and was done by a few, 
and they thought it not much if he had carried mat- 
ters better ; and yet his complaint was, they do 
nothing ; But the bottome of it lieth here, he for- 
merly had all or what he would ; now he hath but 
what they will ; and admonitions also to rule better^ 
and he is provoked by other Sachems, and ill coun- 
sel, not to suffer this, and yet doth not know how to 
help it ; hence arise his tentations, in which I do 
very much pity him. Having all this information 
what they had done, and how causelesse his com- 
plaint and discontent was, I thought it a difficult 
thing to ease his spirit, and yet clear and justifie the 
people, which I was to endeavour the next day of our 
meeting after the former contestations, therefore I 
was willing to get some body with me ; And by 
Gods providence. Elder Heath went with me, and 
when we came there, we found him very full of dis- 
content, sighing, sower looks, &c. but we took no 
notice of it. 

I preached that day out of the fourth of Matthew, 
the temptations of Christ ; and when I came at that 
temptation, of the Devils showing Christ the king- 
domes and glories of the world, thereby to tempt him 
from the service of God, to the service of the Devill ; 
I did apply it wholly to his case, shewing him the 
Devill was now tempting him, as he tempted Christ; 
and Satan sheweth him all the delights and dignities. 



43 

and gifts and greatnesse that he was wont to have in 
their sinfull way ; Satan also tels him he shall lose 
them all if he pray to God, but if he will give over 
praying to God he shall have them all again ; then 
I shewed him how Christ rejected that temptation, 
and exhorted him to reject it also, for either he must 
reject the temptation, or else he will reject praying 
to God ; if he should reject praying to God, God 
would reject him. 

After our exercise was ended, we had conference 
of the matter, and we gave him the best counsel 
we could (as the Lord was pleased to assist) and 
when we had done. Elder Heath his observation of 
him was, that there was a great change in him, his 
spirit was very much lightned, and it much ap- 
peared both in his countenance and carriage, and he 
hath carried all things fairly ever since. 

But the temptation still doth work strongly, in the 
Countrey, iheSachems opposing any that desire to sub- 
mit themselves to the service of the Lord, as appear- 
eth sundry wayes ; some that began to listen, are 
gone quite back ; I meane Sachems and some people 
that have a mind to it, are kept back ; this last Lec- 
ture day one came in and submitted himself to call 
on God, and said he had been kept back this half 
yeer by opposition, but now at last the Lord hath 
helped and emboldned him to break through all 
opposition. 

In the beginning of 1651, m his account of the pro- 
gress of the Indians, Eliot writes. One of our first and 



44 

principall men is dead, which though it be a great 
blow and damping to our worke in some Respects, 
yet the Lord hath not left the rest to discouragement 
thereby, nay the worke is greatly furthered, for hee 
made so gracious an end of his life, and imbraced 
death with such holy submission to the Lord, and 
was so little terrified at it, as that it hath greatly 
strengthened the Faith of the living to be constant, 
and not to feare death, greatly commending of the 
death of TVamporas,-\ for that was his name, I 
thinke he did more good by his death, then he could 
have done by his life : one of his sayings was. That 
God giveth us three mercies in this world ; the first 
is health and strength ; the second is food and cloaths ; 
the third is sicknesse and death ; and when wee 
have had our share in the two first, why should wee 
not be willing to take our part in the third ? for his 
part he was : I heard him speake thus, and at other 
times also, and at his last he so spake, and it so 
tooke with them, that 1 observe it in their prayers, 
that they so reckon up Gods dispensations to them ; 
his last words which he spake in this world were 
these ; Jehova Aninnumah Jesus Christ, (that is) 
Oh, Lord, give mee Jesus Christ ; and when hee 
could speake no more, he continued to lift up his 
hands to Heaven, according as his strength lasted, 
unto his last breath ; so that they say of him he 
dyed praying ; when I visited him the last time that 
I saw him in this world (not doubting but I shall 

t The same Indian mentioned on pages 32, 33. / 



45 

see him againe with Christ in Glory) one of his say~ 
ings was this : f Foure yeares and a Quarter since, 
I came to your house, and brought some of our 
Children to dwell with the English, now I dye, I 
Strongly intreate you (for that is their phrase) that 
you would strongly intreate Elder Heath, (with 
whom his Sonne liveth) and the rest, which have 
our Children, that they may be taught to know God, 
so as that they may teach their Countrymen, because 
such an example would doe great good among them, 
his heart was much upon our intended worke, to 
gather a Church among them, I told him I greatly 
desired that he might live (if it were Gods will) to 
be one in that worke, but if he should now dye he 
should goe to a better Church, where Abraham, and 
Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and all the dead 
Saints were with Jesus Christ in the presence of God 
in all happinesse and Glory ; he said he feared not 
death, he was willing to dye, and turning to the 
Company which were present, hee spake unto them 
thus ; / 710W shall dye, but Jesus Christ calleth you 
that live to goe to Naticke, that there the Lord might 
rule over you, that you might make a Church, and 
have the Ordinance of God among you, believe in 
his Word, and doe as hee commandeth you : With 
many such words exhorting them, which they could 
not heare without weeping. A little before his death 
hee spake many gracious words unto them, wherein 
cne passage was this ; Some delight to heare and 

t The occasion referred to is narrated on pages 32, 33, 



46 

speake idle and foolish words, but I desire to 
heare and speake onely the words of God, exhorting 
them soe to doe likewise : his gracious words were 
acceptable and affecting, that whereas they used to 
flie [and avoyd with terrour such as lye dying, now 
on the contrary they flocked together to heare his 
dying words, whose death and buriall they beheld 
with many teares ; nor am I able to write his Storie 
without weeping. 

Another affliction and damping to our worke was 
this, that it hath pleased God to take away that In- 
dian who was most active in Carpentrey, and who 
had framed me an house with a little direction of 
some English, whom I sometime procured to goe 
with mee to guide him, and to set out his worke : 
hee dyed of the Pox this winter, so that our house 
lyeth, not yet raised, which maketh my aboade 
amongst them more difficult, and my tarriance 
shorter then else I would, but the Lord helpeth me to 
remember that he hath said. Endure thou hardnesse 
as a good Souldier of Jesus Christ. These are 
some of the gracious tryalls and Corrections the 
Lord hath exercised us withall, yet he hath mingled 
them with much love and favour in other respects ; 
for it hath pleased God this winter much to inlarge 
the abilitie of him whose helpe I use in translating 
the Scriptures, which I account a great furtherance 
of that which I most desire, namely, to communicate 
unto them as much of the Scriptures in their owne 
language as I am able. 



47 

This year 54 I moved the Elders, that they would 
give me advice and assistance in this great businesse, 
& that they would at a fit season examine the In- 
dians in point of their knowledge^ because we found 
by the former triall, that a day will be too little (if 
the Lord please to call them on to Church-fellowship) 
examine them in points of Knowledge, and hear 
their Confessions, and guide them into the holy Cov- 
evant of the Lord, seeing all these things are to be 
transacted in a strange language, and by Interpreters, 
and with such a people as they be in these their first 
beginnings. But if they would spend a day on pur- 
pose to examine them in their knowledge, there 
would be so much the more liberty to doe it fully and 
thoroughly, (as such a work ought to be) as also 
when they may be called to gather into Church-Com- 
munion, it may suffice that some one of them should 
make a Doctrinall Confession before the Lord and 
his people, as the rule of faith which they build upon, 
the rest attesting their consent unto the same : And 
themselves (the Elders I meauj If the Lord so far 
assist the Indians, as to give them satisfaction) might 
testifie that upon Examination they have found a 
competency of knowledge in them to inable them 
unto such a work and state, and thus the work 
might be much shortned, and more comfortably ex- 
pedited in one day, I found no unreadinesse in the 
Elders to further this work. 

They concluded to attend the work, and for sev- 
erall Reasons advised that the place should be at 



48 

Roxbury, and not at JVatick, and that the Indians 
should be called thither ; the time they left me to ap- 
point, in such a season as wherein the Elders may 
be at best liberty from other publick occasions. The 
time appointed was the 13 of the 4 moneth ; mean- 
while I dispatched Letters unto such as had knowl- 
edge in the Tongue, requesting that they would 
come and help in Interpretation, or attest unto the 
truth of my Interpretations. I sent also for my 
Brother Mayhu, who accordingly came, and brought 
an Interpreter with him. Others whom I had de^ 
sired, came not. I informed the Indians of this ap'^ 
pointment, and of the end it was appointed for, 
which they therefore called, and still doe, when they 
have occasion to speak of it, JVatootomuhteae kesuk, 
A day of asking Questions, or, a day of Examina- 
tion. I advised them to prepare for it, and to pray 
earnestly about it, that they might be accepted 
among Gods people, if it were the will of God. 

It pleased God so to guide, that there was a pub- 
lick Fast of all the Churches, betwixt this our ap- 
pointment, and the accomplishment thereof: which 
day they kept, as the Churches did, and this busi- 
nesse of theirs was a Principall matter in their 
Prayers. 

It hath pleased God to lay his hand in sicknesse 
upon Monequassun our JVatick Schoolmaster, so 
that we greatly wanted his help and concurrence in 
this businesse. Yea, and such is his disease {viz. 
an Ulcer in his Lungs) that I fear the Lord will take 



49 

him away from us, to the great hindrance of our 
work, in respect of humane means : Lord increase 
our faith ! 

There fell out a very great discouragement a little 
before the time, which might have been a scandall 
unto them, and I doubt not but Satan intended it so ; 
but the Lord improved it to stir up faith and Prayer, 
and so turned it another way: Thus it was. Three 
of the unsound sort of such as are among them that 
pray unto God, who are hemmed in by Relations, 
and other means, to doe that which their hearts love 
not, and whose Vices Satan improveth to scandalize 
and reproach the better sort withall ; while many, 
and some good people are too ready to say they are 
all alike. I say three of them had gotten severall 
quarts of strong water, (which sundry out of a greedy 
desire of a little gaine, are to ready to sell unto them, 
to the offence and grief of the better sort of Indians, 
and of the godly English too) and with these Liquors, 
did not onely make themselves drunk, but got a Child 
of eleven years of age, the Son of Toteswamp, whom 
his Father had sent for a little Corne and Fish to that 
place near Watertowne, where they were. L^nto 
this Child they first gave too spoonfuls of Strong-wa- 
ter, which was more then his head could bear ; and 
another of them put a Bottle, or such like Vessel to 
his mouth, and caused him to drink till he was very 
di-unk ; and then one of them domineered, and said, 
JSTow we will see whether your Father will punish 
us for drunkenness (for he is a Ruler among them) 
5 



50 

seeing you are drunk with us for company ; and 
in this case lay the Child abroad all night. They 
also fought, and had been severall times Punished 
formerly for Drunkennesse. 

When Toteswamp heard of this, it was a great 
shame and breaking of heart to him, and he knew 
not what to doe. The rest of the Rulers with him 
considered of the matter, they found a complication 
of many sins together. 

1 The sin of Drunkennesse, and that after many 
former Punishments for the same. 

2 A willfull making of the Child drunk, and ex- 
posing him to danger also; 

3 A degree of reproaching the Rulers^ 

4 Fighting. 

Word was brought to me of it, a little before I 
took a Horse to goe to JVatick to keep the Sabbath 
with them, being about ten dayes before the appoint- 
ed Meeting. The Tidings sunk my spirit extremely, 
I did judge it to be the greatest frowne of God that 
ever I met withall in the work, I could read no- 
thing in it but displeasure, I began to doubt about 
our intended work : I knew not what to doe, the 
blacknesse of the sins, and the Persons reflected on, 
made my very heart faile me : For one of the offend- 
ors (though least in the offence) was he that hath 
been my Interpreter, whom I have used in Translat- 
ing a good part of the Holy Scriptures ; and in that re- 
spect I saw much of Satans venome, and in God I saw 
displeasure. For this and some other acts of Apos- 



51 

tacy at this time, I had thoughts of casting him off 
from that work, yet now the Lord hath found a way 
to humble him. But his Apostacy at this time was 
a great Triall, and I did lay him by for that day of 
our Examination, I used another in his room. Thus 
Satan aimed at me in this their miscarrying ; and 
Toteswamp is a Principall man in the work, as you 
shall have occasion to see anon God-willing. 

By some occasion our Ruling Elder [Heath] and 
I being together, I opened the case unto him, and the 
Lord guided him to speak some gracious words of 
encouragement unto me, by which the Lord did re- 
lieve my spirit ; and so I committed the matter and 
issue unto the Lord, to doe what pleased him, and in 
so doing my soul was quiet in the Lord. I went on 
my journey being the 6 day of the week ; when I 
came at JVatick, the Rulers had then a Court about 
it. Soon after I came there, the Rulers came to me 
with a Question about this matter, they related the 
whole business unto me, with much trouble and 
grief. 

Then Toteswamp spake to this purpose, / am 
greatly grieved about these things, and now God 
iryeth me whether I love Christ or my Child 
best. They say, they will try me ; but I say, God 
will try me. Christ saith. He that loveth father, 
or mother i or wife, or Child, better than me, is not 
worthy of me. Christ saith, I must correct my 
Child, if I should refuse to doe that, I should not 
love Christ. God bid Abraham to kill his Son^ 



52 

Abraham loved God, and therefore he would have 
done it, had not God with-held him. God saith to 
me, onely punish your Child, and how can I love 
God, if I should refuse to doe that 7 These things 
he spake in more words, and much affection, and not 
with dry eyes : Nor could I refraine from teares to 
hear him. When it was said, The Child was not so 
guilty of the sin, as those that made him drunk ; He 
said, That he was guilty of sin, in that he feared 
not sin, and in that he did not believe his counsells 
that he had often given him, to take heed of evill 
eompany ; but he had believed Satan and sinners 
more than him, therefore he needed to be punished. 
After other such like discourse, the Rulers left me, 
and went unto their businesse, which they were 
about before I came, which they did bring unto this 
conclusion, and judgment. They judged the three 
men to sit in the stocks a good space of time, and 
thence to be brought to the whipping-Post, & have 
each of them twenty lashes. The boy to be put in 
the stocks a little while, and the next day his father 
was to whip him in the School, before the Children 
there ; all which Judgment was executed. When 
they came to be whipt, the Constable fetcht them 
one after another to the Tree (which they make use 
of instead of a Post) where they all received their 
Punishments : which done, the Rulers spake thus, 
one of them said, The Punishments for sin are the 
Commandments of God, and the worke of God, and 
his end was, to doe them good, and bring them to 



53 

repentance. And upon that ground he did in more 
words exhort them to repentance, and amendment of 
life. When he had done, another spake unto them 
to this purpose. You are taught in Catechisme, that 
the wages of sin are all miseries and calamities 
in this life, and also death and eternall damnation 
in hell. JVow you feele some smart as the fruit of 
your sin, and this is to bring you to repentance, 
that so you may escape the rest. And in more words 
he exhorted them to repentance. When he had 
done, another spake to this purpose, Heare all 
yee people (turning himselfe to the People who stood 
round about, I think not lesse then two hundred, 
small and great) This is the Commandment of the 
Lord, that thus it should be done unto sinners ; and 
therefore let all take warning by this, that you com' 
mit not such sins, least you incur these Punish" 
ments. And with more words he exhorted the Peo- 
ple. Others of the Rulers spake also, but some 
things spoken I understood not, and some things slipt 
from me : But these which I have related remained 
with me. 

When I returned to Roxbury, I related these 
things to our Elder [Heath] to whom I had before re- 
lated the sin, and my grief: who was much affected 
to hear it, and magnified God. He said also. That 
their sin was but a Transient act, which had no 
Rule, and would vanish : But these Judgments were 
an ordinance of God, and would remaine, and doe 
more good every way, then their sin could doe hurt, 
5* 



54 

telling me what cause I had to be tbankfull for such 
an issue : Which I therefore relate^ because the 
Lord did speak to my heart j in this exigent^ by hi» 
vjords.'"' 

The incident above narrated presents to the im- 
agination a scene of remarkable interest and exquisite 
beauty — the reverence of manhood to age, and the 
deference of strength to wisdom. Eliot was in the 
prime of life,t and Heath, the venerable Elder, had 
already numbered his " three score years and ten," 
the al5oted term of man's life. In the beginning of 
their course. Heath's age was nearly double that of 
the youthful Eliot, who had now, for more than 
twenty years, listened to his Godly counsel and ex- 
perience. With equal steps, the one had passed from 
youth to the meridian of life, and the other had now 
come to the evening of his days. Eliot was the 
resolute, enthusiastic Missionary of the Cross, well 
disciplined in obedience to the apostolic injunction, 
' ' Endure thou hardness as a good soldier of Jesus 
Clu-ist." Heath had " fouglit the good fight of 
faith," had " endured to the end ; " with years he 
had gathered wisdom, and to him — the patriarch of 
the church — whose walk had been with God, all 
looked with reverence. The Christian soldier, labor- 
ing under discouragement, depressed by thickening 
difficulties, and well nigh wavering in his faith in 
God's favor to him, could no longer bear the burden 

t Eliot was fifty years of age, — with a man of his temperate 
habits and uniformity of life, the period of his highesA 
strength. 



55 

alone, abruptly "opened the case" to the aged 
father, and disclosed to him the weight resting on his 
spirit. "The Lord guided him," said Eliot, "to 
speake some gracious words of encouragement unto 
me, by which the Lord did revive my spirit," and 
" my soul was quiet in the Lord." Thus encour- 
aged and refreshed, he returned to the task with a 
calmed mind, learned all the evils which had be- 
fallen his beloved Indians, and again sought com- 
munion with the old Christian " who was much 
affected by his relation, and magnified God, who 
would bring good out of evil." His trusting spirit 
and gentle words soothed the troubled heart of Eliot, 
who long remembered the occasion, and " related " 
it " because," said he, " the Lord did speake to my 
heart, in this exigent, by his words.' 

The examination of the Indians was held at Rox- 
bury, instead of Natick, partly, no doubt, in consider- 
ation of Elder Heath's great age. Eliot says that 
" when the day was well spent in questioning the 
Indians, some that were aged desired that an end 
might be put unto this work for this time, because 
by this tast which they had, they saw that which 
gave them comfortable satisfaction." 

The preceding pages exhibit the intense interest 
which they felt in the welfare of the aborigines, 
whose degradation and heathenism excited their fer- 
vent sympathy, and their noble self-sacrifices in their 
behalf. Like their Great Master, they " went about 
doing good ' * and no sacrifice was too great in this 



56 

labor of love. They afforded no opportunity for the 
cold suspicions of the cautious hearer, or the cavil- 
ing jealousies of the skeptical worldling, by wordy 
benevolence and earnest exhortations to others ^ but 
evinced their sincerity by their own personal devo- 
tion. It was a disinterested service. Their highest re- 
ward was in the advance of the poor Indian — there was 
no other to gain. Their greatest success could con- 
fer on them no worldly gain, or gratify any vain am- 
bition ; they had no emoluments to tempt them, no 
honors to seek for, no popular applause to win. Saint 
Paul had listeners to the story of his hardships, but of 
even this source of consolation to the human heart, — 
sympathy, — they were well nigh destitute, in the iso- 
lated scene of their labors, separated from their coun- 
trymen, and the civilized world by the waste ocean 
of 3000 miles, — crossed fearfully by the occasional 
and slow-moving emigrant-ship, — then whitened only 
by the storm, now by the canvass of ten thousand 
ships, familiar with its waters. Saint Paul's account 
of his ministry is, with singular truth and exact- 
ness, applicable to the services of the Apostle Eliot 
and liis venerable Elder, with their associates, — 
*' in weariness and painfulness, watchings often, in 
hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and 
nakedness. Besides those things that are without, 
that which cometh upon me daily, the care of the 
church. Who is weak and I am not weak? who 
is offended and I am not ? " t 
t ii. Cor. xi. 26, 31. 



57 

These benevolent enterprises, commanded the at- 
tention of the good men of the " Commonwealth " 
in old England, and led to the foundation of the So- 
ciety for the " propagation of the Gospel in New- 
England," which was incorporated in July 1649. t 

t Among the original corporate members, were Richard 
Hutchinson and Thomas Bell, " citizens of London." 
Doubtless, the latter was the benefactor of our free 
school, for a while, resident in Roxbury, — and the former, 
a son of Mrs. Susanna Hutchinson of Alford in Lincolnshire, 
who came to N. E. about 1634, with her family, and died in 
Wells in Maine, about 1642, in the family of her son-in-law, 
the Rev. John Wheelwright. Richard returned to London 
and acquired great wealth. He lost ^60,000 by the great Are 
in London, his grand-son removed to Ireland, and was the 
founder of the family of the present Earl of Donoughmore. 
William Hutchinson, the eldest brother, a " man of good 
estate," went to Rhode Island, and " was there Governor at 
the beginning of the Colony, and died about 1642." His wife 
Anne, '* daughter of Mr. Marvury, sometime a Preacher 
in Lincolnshire, after of London," was the Heroine of the 
Antinomian controversy. They were the ancestors of the 
Hutchinson Family,who fill so eminent and respectable a posi- 
tion in the public annals of Massachusetts during 150 years to 
1775. They were accompanied to Rhode Island by their brother 
Edward Hutchinson, their son-in-law, Thomas Savage, (son 
of William Savage of Taunton in Somersetshire,) and many 
others of the most valuable citizens, a portion of whom re- 
turned to Massachusetts. The will of Samuel Hutchinson 
(brother of William, Richard and Edward,) is recorded and on 
file in the Registry of Probate in Suffolk. It was made April 7, 
1667, and proved on the 16th of July following ; in it, he men- 
tions Samuel ^Vheelwright, eldest son of Sister Wheelright 
[wife of Rev. John Wheelwright] Elizabeth Person, Katherine 
Naylor, Mary Loyd, Rebecca Mauerick, Hannah Chickley 
and Sarah "Wheelwright, the six daughters of Sister Wheel- 
right ; Habijah, Thomas, Ephraim, Perez, Mary and Denis, 
[Dionisia] Savage and Hannah Gillam, the seven children of 
my cozen [niece] ffaith savage, deceased [wife of Hon. 
Thomas Savage;] to cousen PelegSanford, my orchard, lying 
in Portsmouth, R. I. Edward Rushworth, eldest son to my 
sister Rushworth. Elizabeth Hutchinson, the Eldest daugh- 
ter of my cozen Edward Hutchinson. Restram [quere 
Tristram] William, Ezbon and Elisha Sanford ; Elisha, eldest 



58 

The Act recites that by "pains and industry," 
" certain English ministers of the Gospel, and others, 
residing in or near our colonies and plantations in 
New England," " having attained to speak the lan- 
guage of the heathen natives in those parts, have, by 
their teachings and instructions, brought over many 
of them from the power of darkness, and the King- 
dom of Satan, to the knowledge of the true and only 
God," and that those ^^ planters who first began and 
contributed largely thereto, being, of themselves, un- 
ble to bear the whole charge thereof," the society will 
"laj a foundation for the educating, clothing, civil- 
izing and instructing the poor natives, "f The finan- 
cial records of this corporation are of considerable 
historical value, as evidence of the extent of these 
early missionary operations, and of the names of 
many of the preachers and lay assistants. 

That Christian philosopher and patron of Christian 

son to my cozen Edward Hutchinson 5 to Elizabeth Hutchin- 
son, Ann Diar and Susan Hutchinson, " my neck of land to- 
gether with Mackpila (1) as also that " meadow over against 
Mackpila," which lyeth in Portsmouth in Rhode Island 5 my 
brother edward hutchinson ; Edward, Katherine and 
Hannah Hutchinson, the other children of my cozen Edward 
Hutchinson ; my cousin Susan Cole ; my cozen Bridget 
Willis ; to Sarah Langdon wife of John Langdon, a " great 
bible ; " my cousin Wjllis of Bridgwater;" cousin Edward 
Hutchinson senior of [Boston ?] in New England, sole execu- 
tor. Vol. 1. 532.3. [New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg. I. 297. 302. 
II. 172. 400. IV. 188. Hutchinson's Hist, of Massachusetts 
Bay. I. 72. Thomas Weld's " Short Story " London, 1644. 
p. 31. 

(1) Genesis, xxiii. 9. 

t Birche's Life of Hon. Robert Boyle. 



59 

enterprises, the Honorable Robert Boyle, was, for 
many years j the leading spirit of this Institution, and 
the good genius of Eliot and Gookin. A portion of 
their correspondence is preserved. To him, as 
*' Governor of the Right Honorable Corporation for 
Gospelizing the Indians," Commissioner Gookin, in 
1677, dedicated his " Historical Account of the do- 
ings and sufferings of the Christian Indians," and 
stiles him a "tender-nursing father to Christ's inter- 
ests and concerns among the English and Indians in 
New England.! 

It was stated in a previous page that the ecclesi- 
astical virtually controlled the civil power. A 
remarkable instance is found in Winthrop's Jour- 
nal. In 1636, his presence was required in Eng- 
land, and the consent of the legislature was given 
that he might go, but "divers of the congre- 
gation, [that is the church] of Boston met to- 
gether, and agreed that they did not apprehend the 
necessity of the Governour's departure upon the 
reasons alleged, and sent some of them to declare the 
same to the court ; whereupon the Governor ex- 
pressed himself to be an obedient child to the church, 
and therefore, notwithstanding the license of the 
court, yet without the leave of the church he durst 
not go away. I 

Mr, William Hutchinson, served in the General 
Court several elections, as a representative for Boston 

t Published in the Am. Ant. Soc. Transactions. Vol. 11. 
X Winthrop I. 208. 



60 

iintil in 1636 he was discharged from assisting at the 
particular courts at the request of the church, t 
This was a consequence of their jealousy of his 
sympathy with his wife's heretical opinions. 

The Apostle Eliot wrote to Cromwell, in 1652, " I 
trust that the Lord will yet further improve you not 
only by endeavouring to put government into the 
hands of Saints,^.' [" to raise up His own Kingdom 
in the room of all earthly j50i«ers,"] which the 
Lord hath made you eminently careful to do, but also 
by promoting Scripture Government and laws, thai 
so the word of Christ might rule all, In which great 
Services to the name of Christ, I doubt not, but it 
will be some comfort to your heart to see the King- 
dom of Christ rising up in these Western parts of 
the world. % 

In this quasi Theocratic government, there was a 
singular intermingling and confusion of civil and 
ecclesiastical affairs. The admission or election to 
civil office, or the possession of any considerable de- 
gree of personal influence was attainable only through 
the Church. There was no legal or constitutional 
Union of Church and State, on the contrary it was to 
escape from this bondage as well as that of Episco- 

t Hutchinson's Hist. Mass. Bay. I. 55. Even as late 
as 1719, if a person had been excommunicated for 
heresy, — a matter of opinion, though he suffered no civil 
penalties, yet after that he was rarely chosen by the 
■people to any publick employments. Cotton Mather's 
Ratio Disciplinae — 155, 156. 

t Hist. Coll. xxiv. 212. 



61 

pacy that they left England. Dr. Increase Mather, 
when eighty years of age, attested the fidelity of his 
son Cotton's treatise " Ratio Disciplinise," and while 
reviewing the history of his country, his soul glowed 
with love for the principles of liberty, and for the 
great men, (with whom, as a worthy son, he had been 
a co-laborer,) who had made them practical truths. 
With the warmth of youth and the energy of manhood, 
he declared it was not " with respect to the Funda- 
mentals in Doctrine, that our Father's came into 
this Wilderness. For they agreed to the Docirinal 
Articles of the Church of England (as full as any, 
and more full than many,) of the Conformists in that 
Church. But it was with regard unto Church Order 
and Discipline, that our pious Ancestors the Good 
old Puritan JVon-conf or mists, transported them- 
selves with their Families over the vast Ocean to 
these goings down of the Sun. On which Account, 
a Degeneracy from the Principles of pure Scriptural 
Worship and Order in the Church, would be more 
Evil in the Children of JVeio England, than any 
other People in the world." They could not be con- 
vinced that they had any want of a Diocesan, but 
were conscious of power to manage within them- 
selves the discipline, with which they should be 
regulated. 

Though theoretically dissolved, the Church and 
State were virtually a unity, one and the same, t 

t So far as the promotion of Congregational Puritan- 
ism was in question. The government used their ut- 

6 



62 

Worldly and religious matters were strangely in* 
volved. For a time, freedom of thought was almost 
smothered, the sanctity of private rights and opinions 
was violated, but in the system and through the 
whole mass, existed the cardinal principle of individ- 
ual independence, slowly, but more and more per- 
ceptibly, diffusing its vitality and heat, deep below the 

most efforts to discourage every other form, enforced 
by rigorous laws, of which there is most painful 
evidence in the early history of Maine, which was 
thoroughly English, royalist and episcopalian in its 
origin. They forbade the practice of clerical duties 
to any of the Church of England. In October 
1660, the General Court, not seeming to aim at any 
corruption or immorality, but only at the form, under 
which the ordinance was administered, adopted the fol- 
lowing injunction: " Whereas it appears to this Court 
by several testimonies of good repute, that one Robert 
Jordan, [the Episcopal Clergyman] did in July last, 
after the exercises were ended, on the Lord's day, in the 
house of Mrs. Macworth, in the town of Falmouth, then 
and there, baptize three children of Nath'l Wallis 
of the same town, to the offence of the government of 
this Commonwealth, this Court judgeth it necessary to 
be witness against such irregular practices, and do there- 
fore, order that the Secretary, by letter, in the name of 
this Court, require him to desist from any such practices 
for the future, and also that he appear before the next 
General Court, to answer what shall he laid against him, 
tor what he had done in times past." Willis^ Portland. 
The Rev. Robert Jordan, was an intrepid son of the 
Established Church, and a faithful memoir of his life, 
would furnish a history of the early differences and con- 
nection between Maine and Massachusetts. It ought to 
be written by a discriminating and impartial spirit, free 
from partizanship, a seeker after the truth. The osten- 
sible charges against " Morton of Merry Mount'* and 
asrainst the Quakers, were for civil offences. 



63 

surface of society, and creating the mental and then 
the moral life, which developed itself by the effer- 
vescence of the public mind in popular restlessness 
and discontent, and occasional insubordination and in 
heresies, and skepticisms in government and religion, 
but which, in due time, was to furnish the materiel 
for a republic. 

The annals of New England, present to the philo- 
sophic student, the history of a thinking, living 
people, freed from the apathy and casting off the 
shackles of superstition. With a calm, determined 
consciousness of being something, and purpose of 
having an existence in and for themselves, they left 
old England, the loyal subjects of his Majesty 
" by the grace of God," but ''dissenting " children 
from the Apostolic church, destined to learn on the 
free soil and breathing the free air of New England, 
pure and fresh from the hand of the Creator, that 
they were not subjects, but citizens, not the children 
of the Church, but " the sons of God." 

Those, and those only, who constituted the Church, 
were embraced in or recognized as members of the 
State. Citizenship, and eligibility to office, depended, 
not on subscription to the thirty-nine articles, but to 
the creed of the church, and what was more onerous, 
submission to its discipline. t 

f " None should be admitted to the freedom of the 
body politick but such as were church members." Hutch- 
inson says, "this was a most extraordinary order or 
law, and yet it continued in force until the dissolution of 
the government, it being repealed, in appearance only, 



64 

The nature of the office of Ruling Elder was not 
clearly defined among the Fathers of New England > 
whether partaking of ecclesiastical authority or not, 
but there will be occasion to refer to the subject 
again. Certain it is, that they " shared in the 
management of ecclesiastical affairs, represented the 
people and preserved their liberties," In about the 
year 1700, an assembly of the pastors published that,. 
" Whereas 'tis the Business of a Ruling Elder, to 
assist his Pastor in visiting the Distressed; instruct- 
ing the Ignorant ; comforting the Afflicted ; Rebuk- 
ing the Unruly ; Discovering the State of the whole 
Flock ; Exercising the Discipline of the Gospel upon 
offenders ; and promoting the desirable Growth of 
the Church ; 'tis necessary that he be a Person of 
a Wisdom, Courage, Leisure and Exemplary Holi- 
ness and Gravity, agreeable to such Employments." 
The office of Ruling Elder entailed upon its possessor, 
responsibilities and duties almost as various as the 
interests of the Commonwealth. It was no sinecure 
for it reversed that ecclesiastical abuse, having the 
" cure of souls " without the " benefice." This 
officer, from his mixed lay and ecclesiastical position,, 

after the rest-oration of King Charles the Second. Had 
they been deprived of their civil privileges in England by 
an act of parliament, unless they would join in com- 
munion with, the churches there, it might very well have 
been the first in the roll of grievances. But such were 
the requisites to qualify for church membership here that 
the grievance was abundantly greater.," Hist, of Mass* 
Bay. I. 2G. 



65 

and the strength of his character and social influ- 
ence, pre-supposed by his elevation to that dignity, 
had, in effect, a general supervision of affairs, from 
the petty municipal affairs of the town, to consulta- 
tions upon the concerns of general interest, — from the 
minutiae of the personal and domestic life of the church 
members, (many v^^ere not church-members,) to 
the graver troubles between churches, or between 
churches and their pastors, — from the enlightening and 
guiding of inquiring minds and tender consciences, in 
the various degrees of initiation to " full communion" 
with the church, to the consideration of the great 
theological controversies of the day. 

It can hardly be expected that after the lapse of 
two centuries, many instances can be adduced, in 
connection with any one name, elucidating this state- 
ment, but the few that have been found in which Elder 
Heath acted, are of some interest and to the point. 

The original of the following document is in the 
hand-writing of the Apostle Eliot, and bears first his 
signature, then Elder Heath's and William Heath's, 
followed by about sixty other " freemen or sworne 
souldgers of the Towne of Roxbury," nearly thirty 
of whose names are illegible. 

To the much honored General Court, now assem- 
bled at Boston, this 31 of the dd month, 1647; 

We whose names are here under written, being 
freemen or sworne soldgers of the Towne of Roxburj', 
being unanimously agreed the 15th day of the first 
6* 



66 

month, to proceede to the choyce of a Captame, did 
accordingly proceede, and the number of 64 votes 
were for Mr. Hugh Prichard, and the second man in 
choyce had 38 votes, but he neither was, nor is a 
free man t [or a member of the church,] the 3d man 
in choyce had only 4 votes. Now our humble re- 
quest unto this honorable Court is, that it would 
please you to confirme this our choyce of the saide 
Mr. Prichard to be cur Captaine, and have entreated 
our Ensigne and Sarjeants to propose this o^r choyce 
to this honored Court. And thus praying for the 
blessing of heaven to be and rest upon all your coun- 
sells and indeavors for the wellfaire of the poore 
Churches of Christ under your protection we rest 

Your humble petitioners, 
John Eliot [Teacher,] Isack Heath [Elder,] 
William Heath, Christopher Peake, Daniel Bruer, 
Abraham Howe, Sen'r, John Mays, Edward Porter, 
Abraham Newell, Sam'l Finch, John Crafts, Robert 
Hawes, John Watson, Edward Parker, Gilles Pay son, 
Humprey Johnson, William Cheney, Edward Pai- 
son, John Turner, Richard Woode, Senior, John 
Wode, Richard Peper, Hendric Farnum, Robert 
Pepper, Robert Seauer, John Roberts. John Hanchut, 
James Morgan, Samuel Stow, Isaack Johnson, Isack 
Morrell, John White, Arthur Garey, Robart Wil- 
liams, [and thirty others whose names are illegible.] 
Certainly, these " poore churches of Christ," 
" under the protection of the much honored General 

t See page 63. 



67 

Court," with their " Captains," " Sarjeants," and 
" Ensigns," would have been classed by the "judic- 
ious Hooker," as a portion of the "Church militant,''' 
if not of the " Church triumphant on earth." 

" That Learned and judicious Divine, Mr. John 
Cotton," who was foremost in establishing the order 
of the churches, in his famous treatise on church 
discipline, entitled the " Keyes of the Kingdom of 
Heaven, "t says that "all particular Churches and 
the Elders of them are of equall power, each of them 
respectively in their own congregation, " none of 
them call others their Rabbles or Masters, or Fathers 
(in respect of any authoritie over them,) but all of 
them own and acknowledge one another as fellow 
Brethren, Matthew, 23. 8. 9. 10." and " though the 
Church of a particular Congregation, consisting of El- 
ders and Brethren, and walking with a right foot in 
the truth and peace of the Gospel, be the first subject 
of all church power, needful! to be exercised within 
itself ; and consequently be independent from any 
other Church or Synod in the use of it ; yet it is a 
safe and wholesome, and holy Ordinance of Christ, 
for such particular churches to joyn together in holy 
Covenant or Communion and consolation among 
themselves, to administer all their church affairs 
(which are of weighty, and difficult and common 
concernment,) not without common consultation 
and consent of other churches about them." 

t London, 1644. Republished by Tappan & Dennet, 
Boston, 1843. pp. 75. 102. 103. 



68 

The Apostles were as much independent from one 
another, and stood in as little need of one another's 
help as churches do one of another. And yet, Paul 
went up to Jerusalem, to confer with Peter, James 
and John, lest he should run in vain in the course of 
his ministry, Galatians, 2. 2. Now then it will follow 
by just proportion, that if the other had need to con- 
sult and confer together about the work of their min- 
istry, to procure the freer passage to their calling and 
to their doctrine : then, surely Churches and Elders 
of Churches, though independent one of another, had 
need to communicate their courses and proceeding in 
such cases one with another." 

Every instance of early ecclesiastical usage, duly 
authenticated, has an interest beyond that of mere 
antiquarian curiosity, and is of great value in illus- 
trating and establishing the principles of church polity 
and discipline, as practiced by the Fathers of New 
England. 

The theory of Independence, as laid down by 
the patriarchal Cotton, and matured by the experi- 
ence of a quarter of a century in New England, un- 
der circumstances of freedom which cheered the 
hearts of those heroes of liberty, is exhibited, in prac- 
tice, in the following case, which, as a precedent, 
has also the direct authority of some of the most emi- 
nent names in the New England churches, and the 
acquiescence of some of the most influential " congre- 
gations." These were the schools in which were 
imbibed and learned the principles and spirit essen- 



69 

tially republican, and wholly incompatible with any 
than a nominal allegiance to the government in Eng- 
land. The churches in New England were so many 
nurseries of freemen, training them in the principles 
of self-government and accustoming them to the 
feeling of independence. In these petty organiza- 
tions were developed, in practice, the principles 
of individual and national freedom. Each church 
was a republic in embryo. The fiction became a 
fact, the abstraction a reality ; and the result has 
fully justified the fears which prompted the tyranny 
of Laud and the hatred of monarchy. Cromwell 
represented independency, and its life was in the 
Commonwealth. England had drawn one long 
breath of freedom, and her slumber was disturbed ; 
she partially comprehended the great idea embodied 
in the Commonwealth, and had Cromwell lived, 
would have been redeemed, and anticipated for her- 
self and the world, the slow progress of centuries ; 
but he died, and with him, the Commonwealth in 
old England ceased to be. Monarchy was restored, 
episcopacy was re-established, and England relapsed 
into the old order of things. New England was 
eminently fortunate in her geographical position, 
separated from all the dangerous influences and 
seductive associations of the past. 

A generation born within her own borders were 
now active men. Their eyes had never rested on 
the shores of the old world. They remembered the 
advice of Job: "For inquire, I pray thee, of the 



70 

former age and prepare thyself to the search of the 
fathers ; shall not they teach thee and tell thee, and 
utter words out of their heart ?" and they did receive 
lessons of wisdom from their fathers, who "dwelt 
on the other side of the floods in old times," " who 
were ancient men that had seen the first house when 
the foundation of this house was laid before their 
eyes." Laud and episcopacy, Romanism and 
monarchy, and tyrrany, to them hardly distinguisha- 
ble, were things of memory, and inspired only 
feelings of terror and hatred. They could remem- 
ber no government save the Commonwealth. With 
them, for council and advice, were many of the 
Founders of New England still living. They had 
sacrificed every thing for the principle, and were not 
the men to surrender what had cost them so much, 
while enjoying its full fruition. For these reasons, 
from the time of the Restoration, there was, and 
could be, but little harmony or congeniality between 
old England and New England, and then commenc- 
ed the struggle which ended in the open war of 1776. 
The curious questions about baptismal rights and 
rites, and "fathers' covenants," " members' child- 
ren," and the like questions, will interest the 
ecclesiastical antiquary, but of far deeper import 
was the grand problem to be solved under these 
speculations.! The fact that they debated these 

f The painful extent to which these favorite abstrac- 
tions were carried, appears in the history of that re- 
markable and heroic woman, Mrs. Ann Hutchinson. 



11 

qliestions, voted upon them and decided thenij 
this exercise and expression of individual thought and 
opinion, this feeling of personal responsibility — all 
these presupposed, and exhibited in actual operation, 
those principles of liberty, which we have formally 
and expressly secured to ourselves in our State con- 
stitutions, t 

Extract from the Records of the Rev. Richard 
Mather^s church in Dorchester, Massachusetts. 

'*ii. (1) 54 or 55." "There haueinge beene in 
o'r church some Consideration what State members' 
children are to be Considered in in the church, where 
they are Baptized, it came to vote [and] by diuers 
was voted yt they were members that haueing 
children they should have ym baptized if ymselves 
did take hold their ffathers' Covenant (but w't that 
taking hould of Covenant is was not clearely agreed 
vpon) albeit ymselves being examined were found 
neither fht ffor the Lord's table nor voteing in the 
Church but this and other thinges seemed strange 

•f- Lechford, a lawyer, who passed some time in New 
England, wrote " A short view of New England's pres- 
ent government," in 1641, "which," he says, "seemeth 
to make so many Church members so many Bishops, for 
the Churches in the Bay governe each by all their mem- 
bers unanimously, or else by the major part, wherein 
every one hath equall vote and superspection with their 
Ministers : and that in their Covenant it is expressed 
to be the duty of all the members, to watch over one 
another." Mass. Hist. Col.: vol. XXIII. p. 59. 



72 

and vnsafe vnto divers ; in conclusion soe it was, 
4 L'res were sent to the churches of B[oston], Rox- 
bury, Dedham, and Braintree to intimate vnto ym 
w't was by vs intended if in the space of a moneth 
or 6 weeks we did not heare Reasons from ym 
against [it,] or yt it would be offenciue ; now ye ii (1) 
54 there came 3 L'res one from Boston, Dedham, 
Roxbury in all, wch after kind and Religious 
Salutations we ffind in [torn], Boston desires Rather 
our fforbearance and declares their 2 votes vpon vvtt 
we had done, Dedham sees not Light to goe so tiare 
as we — Roxbury, though diuers of ym ffcare it 
might make the [torn] bring in the corruption 
of old England wch we ffled from, yet haue voted 
that they see noe cause to disswade vs.-\ 

Boston Lre signed 
by Mr. John Wilson, Pastor, 
Elder Thomas Oliver 

William Colbourne 
James Penn. 

Dedham 
by Mr. Allen, Pastor or Teacher, 
Mr. Hontinge. 

Roxbury 
by Mr. John Eliot, Teacher. 

Mr. Samuel Danforth, Pastor, 
Elder Isaac Heath." 

t Next after John Endicott, the first governor of 
Massachusetts, in intolerance, may probably be ranked 



73 

*^The publique worship. 

t The publique worship is in as faire a meeting 
house as they can provide, wherein, in most phices, 
they have beene at great charges. Every Sabbath 
or Lord's day, they come together at Boston, by 
wringing of a bell, about nine of the clock or before. 
The Pastor begins with solemn prayer continuing 
about a quarter of an houre. The Teacher then 
readeth and expoundeth a Chapter ; Then a P«alme 
is sung, which ever one of the ruling Elders dictates. 
After that the Pastor preacheth a Sermon, and 
sometimes ex tempore exhorts. Then the Teacher 
concludes with prayer and a blessing. 

Once a moneth is a Sacrament of the Lords Sup- 
per, whereof notice is given usually a fortnight be- 
fore, and then all others departing save the Church, 
which is a great deale lesse in number then those 
that goe away, they receive the Sacrament, the Min- 
isters and ruling Elders sitting at the Table, the rest 
in their seats, or upon forms : All cannot see the 
Minister consecrating, unlesse they stand up, and 

Gov. Thomas Dudley of Roxbury ; on the site of his 
house, in Roxbury, now stands a Universalist church: 
Dr. Increase Mather was the most active agent in pro- 
curing the charter of 1692, in which liberty of conscience 
\yas granted to all with the exception of Papists. 
[Holmes' Annals. L 437.] It is said that within hail of, 
if not on the very spot where his house stood, at the 
north end of Boston, mass is daily celebrated in a Ro- 
man catholic chapel. These facts have a meaning. 

fLECHFORD. 

7 



74 

make a narrow shift. Then one of the teaching El- 
ders prayes before, and blesseth, and consecrates 
the Bread and Wine, according to the words of In- 
stitution ; the other prays after the receiving of all 
the members : and next Communion, they change 
turnes ; he that began at that, ends at this : and the 
Ministers deliver the Bread in a Charger to some of 
the Chiefs, and peradventure gives to a few the 
Bread into their hands, and they deliver the Charger 
from one to another, till all have eaten ; in like man- 
ner the cup, till all have dranke, goes from one to 
another. Then a Psalme is sung, and with a short 
blessing the congregation is dismissed. Any one, 
though not of the Church, may, m Boston, come in, 
and see the Sacrament administered, if he will : But 
none of any Church in the Country may receive the 
Sacrament there, without leave of the congregation, 
for which purpose he comes to one of the ruling El- 
ders, who propounds his name to the congregation, 
before they goe to the Sacrament. 

About two in the after-noone, they repaire to the 
meeting-house againe ; and then the Pastor begins, 
as before noone, aud a Psalme being sung, the 
Teacher makes a Sermon. He w^as wont, when I 
came first, to reade and expound a Chapter also be- 
fore his sermon in the afternoon. After and before 
his Sermon, he prayeth. 

Aftar that ensues Baptismc, if there be any, which 
is done, by either Pastor or Teacher, in the Deacon's 
seate, the most eminent place in the Churchy n'cxt 



75 

under the Elders seate. The Pastor most commonly 
makes a speech or exhortation to the Church, and 
parents concerning Baptisme, and then prayeth be- 
fore and after. It is done by washing or sprinkling. 
One of the parents being of the Church, the childe 
may be baptized, and the Baptisme is into the name 
of the Father, and of the Sonne, and of \he holy 
Ghost. No sureties are required. 

Which ended, follows the contribution, one of the 
Deacons saying. Brethren of the congregation, now 
there is time left for contribution, wherefore as God 
hath prospered you, so freely offer. Upon some ex- 
traordinany occasions, as building and repairing of 
Churches or meeting-houses, or other necessities, 
the Ministers presse a liberall contribution, with effec- 
tual! exhortations out of Scripture. The Magistrates 
and chiefe Gentlemen first, and then the Elders, and 
all the congregation of men, and m.ost of them that 
are not of the Church, all single persons, widows, 
and women in absence of their husbands, come up 
one after another one way, and bring their offerings 
to the Deacon at his seate, and put it into a box of 
wood for the purpose, if it bee money or papers ; if 
it be any other chattle, they set it or lay it downe 
before the Deacons, and so passe another way to 
their seats againe. This contribution is of money, 
or papers, promising so much money : I have seene 
a faire gilt cup with a cover, offered there by one, 
which is still used at the Communion. Which mon- 
eys, and goods the Deacons dispose towards the 



76 

maintenance of the Ministers, and the poore of the 
Church, and the Churches occasions, without making 
account, ordinarily. 

This done, then followes admission of members, 
or hearing matters of offence, or other things, some- 
times till it be very late. If they have time, after 
this, is sung a Psalme, and then the Pastor con- 
eludeth with a Prayer and a blessing. 



Collecteana 

From the records of Roxbury, during the life of 
Elder Heath, when the tow^n was in its infancy, a 
mere plantation. 

" Accounted with the Capt. of ye Castle Bye ye 
Town of Roxbury the 29th of Aprill 1648 and wee 
f[ind] accounts : ytfi'om ye first time yt any garisone 
was [at the] Castle vntille last michalmasf for horse 
and other charges in 1647 yt ye same unpaid " — 
[torn off.] 

" A Rate made this 2d of January 1648 made by 
the t[own] of Roxbury for the Castle and severall 
other town occasions amounting to the just sum of 
27-07 and put into the hands of John Wody then 
Constable." 

" Memorandum that this 21st of ye 12th moneth 
* * these underwritten were by papers chosen to 

f September 29. 

^He uniformly spelt his name Bowles as appears by 
his autograph in various places in the town records. 



77 

bee select men to order ye Town affaires & for ye 
yeare ensuing viz. Captaine Prichard, Lieutenant 
[Henry] John [son], John Bolest and Broth'r Wil- 
liams. The same day it was voted that those 
younger nie[n who] have payed Rates to Towne 
charges and have not Land as yett allotted to them 
shall by ye * * * have [ye] severall propor- 
tions allowed unto them out of such gr[ounds] as 
shall be found out not to be yett disposed of, The 
* * * are John Stebbin, William Lyon, Humfry 
Johnson, George Bra , peter 

" The same day it was voated that ye maintenance 
of the ministry for the next ensuing yeare shall be 
raised according to men's visible estates and noe re- 
pect to be had unto men's charges in ye thing. 

"The same day it was voated that Mr. Elliott 
shall have for his labors in ye ministry amongst us 
sixty pounds and Mr. Davenport for his, fifty pounds 
for ye next yeere ensuing ye date hereof in case that 
Mr. Davenport come unto us and live among us this 
spring and soe continue. 

" The same day it was voated that John Johnson, 
Deneson, and John Gore, with Mr. John All- 
cocke, and William Cheney, should be the men that 
shall * * * ensuing yeere rate men accorduig to 
their estates for defraying of ye fore sayd charges of 
ye ministry. 

" The same day it was voted that ye Meeting 
howse should suddenly be set in safe repaire and ye 
charges to be defrayed out of ye Constable Rates, 
7* 



78 

John Johnson, John Woody, and John Ruggles be- 
ing overseers of ye worke. 

"The same day it was voted that ye five men 
chosen by ye * * * shall have for ye present yeere 
full pow'r to make and execute such orders as they 
in their apprehensions shall think to be m[ost] con- 
ducing to ye best good of ye Towne. 

'• fFeb. this 23th 1648. 

" It was agreed with John Woody Constabell : 
the sayd John is to flenc in the buring plas :t with a 
ffenc of ston wall sefishently don for strength and 
workmans[hip] also to make a doball gatt of 6 or 8 
fleet wide also to hing it and to ffind all stuf and stons 
and workmanshipe, and he is to finish by the ffirst of 
Ju[ne] next : and in considerashon of this work he 
is to have six pounds and to paye himself out of the 
town Rait in * * * we * * * to sett to o'r hands 
ye day above Retten. the penalty was put att * * * 

' pr me John Wooddey 

pr me Joshua 

pr me John Johnson, 
witness per vs 
John [Stebbin?] 
Benjamin Child 

" We doe appoint that William Curtesse with ye 
helpe of John Boles and John Webb and Francis 
Smyth shall measure out unto William Lyon : Geo. 

t The ancient place of burial at the corner of Wash- 
ington and Eustis Streets. 



79 

Brown, and John Stebbin, being six Acres each 

uian ; for Joshua Hewes. . 

John Gore 

John Bowles 

Robart Wilhams 

"The 17 of the 11th 1652. 

" John Johnson : John Rugels sen. Ed. Deneson : 

Griffin Craft & John Boles [Bowles] ar chosen by 

the towne for selectmen for the yeare ensuing." 



" The tenth of March forty two 

*' It is agreed between Elder Isaack Heath & Cap- 
taine Joseph Weld that the sayd Isaack Heath shall 
make & maintaine all the outside fence from his 
house to the topp of the lane leading up to the meet- 
ing and so to Jasper Raulin's orchyard & Captaine 
Joseph Weld to make and maintain the fence be- 
tween him the said Joseph & Isaack Heath, quite 
through both their two lotts. ' ' 

Witnessed by John Johnson, John Bowles, and 
John Ruggles. 

" John Johnson, Tho. Meakins, John Bowles, Ed. 
Bredy, Willi. Park, were chosen by the town of 
Roxbury to be the selectmen for the year insuing 
from this 29 of the 11 mo: 1654." 

" The town boock wherein most men's lands being 
recorded by God's providence being burned, thereby 
dammidg may * * * to buvzi [busy?] all men, to 
prevent dammedg as aforesayd it is ordered by the 
town of Roxbury that there shall * * * chosen to 



80 

doe their best in deuer to put down such men's lands 
giuen them by the town or that may be lands there 
other ways, and make return vnto the town within 
three months so as this may be accomplished for the 
* * * as dammedge as aforesayd, and allsoe to record 
their ways and the town priulidges. 17 of 11 1652. 

John Johnson 
William Parke 
Isak Morrell 
Ed. Deny son 
GrifFen Craft." 
" The twenty ninth of January (54) it being noted 
by the town, Liberty was granted to John Gorton & 
Robert Pepper to breu & sell peny beare & cakes & 
white bread. 

"The same day being uoted by the towne the 
great white oak in the * beyond the further gate 
in the Quenecticote [Connecticut] lane was giuen to 
John Newell. 

" The twenty ninth of January (54) it was uoted 
by the towne & concluded by the towne uote that 
hence forward the select men shall have no power to 
giue or sell or giue power to lopp or girdle any of the 
trees in the commons of Roxbury but reserve the 
power of the dispose of them wholy in their owne 
hands." 

" John Johnson, Tho. Meakins, John Bowles, Ed. 
Bredy, Willi: Park, were chosen by the town of 
Roxbury to be the select men for the year insuing 
from this 29 of the 11 mo. 1654." 



81 

"21 of the 11th mo. 1655 it was votted that two 
gallyrys should be buih in the meeting hous to i»- 
lardg som for more convenyant preaching to hire 
[hear ?] the word of God and injoyment of God's 
ordinence, at the town chardg : and that fiue men 
should see this done by the twenty ninth of Septem- 
ber next/' 



" 13 of the 12 mo. 1655. Taken an account of 
the Constable William Cheany of a town ratt [rate] 
which he was to gather in some of 41.09.7. f 

John Johnson. 
William Parke 
John Bowles 
Tho. Meakins 
Ed. Bredg." 
•' Payd to John Newell by a bill of the towne rat 
fourteen shills seaven pence towards the mending of 
the pounde & the clapboarding of the ends of the 
meeting house this nineteenth of March 55.56 by us 
the fiue men for that yeare." 

[f This co-temporary order of the authorities, furnishes 
an example of the curious financial expedients of that 
period, and the extreme scarcity of money. 

" This Court finding some Inconveniencjes in collect- 
ing of the Country Rate at this time of the year in regard 
Indian Corne is not merchantable, doe order that whoso- 
ever shall remove from one plantation to another, or out 
of the Country, betwixt this and the tenth of the first 
moneth, shall not have liberty to make payment of their 
sayde rate in Indian Coi-ne, but shall make satisfaction 
according to law, some other way when they shall be 
required thereinito." 2(9)1655.] 



82 

January 19,1656. " Willyam Hopekins was cho- 
sen to clige graues for the town. He is to have for 
men and wimens graues two shillings per man or 
woman, and for children under tean years of age he 
is to have twelvepence per child." 

" The same day ordered that Turkies shal be 
counted Trespassers in corne as liable to pay Dam- 
ages as well as other cattle." 

" The ninth day of February 1656 in a full towne 
meteing it was voted and agreed conserning the de- 
stroying of wolues for the incoredgment of any par- 
sons or parsons in the Towne to take paines to kill 
them, they agreed and voted with a full consent to 
giue thirty shillings to be paid to the party or parties, 
obseruing order, bringing the Head to the constable, 
this to be payd by the Towne rate & so making up 
the same with what the country giues forty shillings.' 



1657. ' The 29 day of January at a towne meet- 
ing thare ware chosen for fiue men 

Edward Denison Isack Morell 

John Bowles Edward Pason 

Griffin Crafts.' 

The same day men ' were chosen to run the Lines 
between Dorchester & Roxbury ' ; and ' betweene 
Boston, Cambridge and Dedham.' 

' John Griggs had a parcel of Land granted to be 
layd out by the fiue men now chosen and Willyam 
Curtis, the land being neare squrell's delight.' 



83 
December 29, 1658, the selectmen ' reckoned with 
John Peirepoyntt,' the constable, respecting the 
'rates' in his hand, and they found his accounts 
right. The constable's duties appear to have em- 
braced those of treasuer, town crier, keeper of the 
peace, and sheriff. They also ' reckoned with Tobi- 
as Dauis, constable.' They ordered him to pay ' to 
Christopher Peak for Hue & Cryes, fine shills & for 
himselfe for Hue & Cryes, wai-ders, & such like 
thinges one pound fourteene shillings ' &c., ' provid- 
ed alwayes that in case that through the want of 
wheat coming in sufficient to pay the bill to Mr. Pea- 
cocke, the constable or Isaack Morrill be forced to 
' pay in other corne at an under rate they or any of 
them acting by discression & counsell there in, we 
order they shall be alowed out of the thirteene shills 
& fower pence so as to suffer noe losse therebey.' 



"January the twelfe [1658] it was agreed that 
the Meeting Howse should be repayred for the 
warmth and comfort of the people, namely that the 
How'se is to be shingled and also two galleries built 
with three seates in a gallery one at one end of the 
Howse and the other at the other end, also the howse 
to be plastered within side with lime and haire, also 
for the setting out [ornamenting] of the Howse that 
some pinakle or 'other ornaments be set upon each 
end of the Howse, also the bell to be remoued in 
some conuenient place for the benefit of the towne 



84 

and the charge to be borne by the seuerall inhabit- 
ance by way of a Rate, always provided before this 
be done that the beames of the Howse be wel search- 
ed that if there be such defects, as some think, we 
may not spend our money in vain.' 

* The select men having a complaint coming to 
them from John Ruggles junior against Peleg Heath 
and Isack Heath, claiming a hie way for carting 
through the ground he hiereth of John Hanchet in 
the great hill lotts, soe heareing the case and exam- 
ining the same, find by sufficient prouse [proof] that 
there is to be no hie way throu that lott but appeares 
that every man is to have his hye way in his own lot 
& and to that end the lotts ware first layed thay ware 
ordered and contriued to reach to the comon Road 
that Leads up the Hill by Isack Heath & Robert 
Prentices howse lotts. 

' This thing was heard and concluded by us whose 
names are underwritten the 21 Aprill 1659. 

John Johnson William Parke 

Thomas Weld Robert Williams 

Gilles Payson.' 



' November 17 in the yeare 1663 in a publicke 
Towne meeting it being voted it was unanimously 
agreed by all the inhabitants that they would allow 
to Mr. John Eliot & Mr. Samuell Danforth for there 
Labour in the ministry for the halfe yeare last past 
the sume of sixty pounds.' 



85 



The first impressions received by our Fathers, and 
the estimates then formed, as to the fertility of the 
land, were, on the whole, unfavorable. The Rev. 
Thomas Shephard, of Cambridge, in 1646, wrote, 
*' with our New English ground when we first came 
over, scarce any man that could believe that Eng- 
lish grain would grow, or that the plow could do any 
good in this woody and rockey soile. And thus they 
continued in this supine unbeliefe for some years, 
till experience taught them otherwise, and now all 
see it to be scarce inferior to Old-English tillage, but 
bears very good burdens."* The Rev. William 
Hooke, of Taunton, in 1640, said, " for plenty 
never land saw the like." The only co-temporary 
topographical description of Roxbury, which the 
writer has discovered, is furnished by Johnson, t 
who wrote in 1654, in a strain almost poetical. He 
describes Roxbury as " situated between Boston 
and Dorchester, being well watered with coole and 
pleasant Springs issuing forth the Rocky hills, and 
with small Freshets, watering the Vallies, of this 
fertill Tow ne, whose forme is somewhat like a wedge, 
double pointed, entering between the two fore-named 
Townes and filled with a very laborious people, whose 

* Mass. Hist. Coll. xxiv. 15. 

t A history of New England by Edward Johnson. 
London, 1654, pp. 43, 44. Johnson was an inhabitant 
of Woburn. 

8 



86 

labours the Lord hath blest, that hi the roome of dis- 
luall Swampes and tearing Bushes, they have very 
goodly Fro it -Trees, fruitfull Fields and Gardens, 
their Heard of Cowes,Oxen, and other young Cattell, 
of that kind, about 350, and dwelling houses neere 
upon 120.* Their streets are large, and some fayre 
Houses ; yet they have built their House for Church 
assembly, destitute and unbeautified with other 
buildings. The church of Christ here is increased 
to about 120 persons, their first Teaching Elder 
called to office is Mr. Eliot, a young man at his 
coming thither, of a cheerfull spirit, walking un- 
blamable, of a godly conversation, apt to teach, as 
by his indefatigable paines both with his ovvne flock, 
and the poor Indians doth appeare, whose language 
he learned purposely to helpe them to the Knowledge 
of God in Christ, frequently preaching in their Wig- 
wams, and Catechising their Children." 

Lechford, a careful and impartial observer gave 
the following very favorable account f of the charac- 
ter and condition of the population in 1641 ; " Pro- 
fane swearing, drunkenesse and beggars are but rare 
in the corapasse of this Patent, though the circum- 
spection of the Magistrates, and the providence of 
God hitherto, the poor living by their labours, and 
great wages, proportionably better than the rich by 

* By the usual mode of computation, viz. five persons 
in a family, there was a population of about 600 people in 
Roxbury in 1653. 

t Mass. Hist. Col. 23, 86. 



87 

their stocks, which, without exceeding great care, 
quickly waste ; " and eleven years after, in 1652, 
this testimony is incidentally confirmed by Eliot, who 
said that it was "plainly to be observed, that one 
end of God's sending so many Saints to New Eng- 
land, was the Conversion of the Indians. For the 
Godly Counsels, and Examples they have had in all 
our Christian Families, have been of great use, both 
to prepare them for the Gospel, and also to further 
the Lord's work in them." * 

Elder Heath lived long enough to witness the won- 
derful increase and prosperity of New England, and 
the bright promise of Eliot's and Mayhew's success 
among the Aborigines. He came into a wilderness, 
and, in its midst, he could now say, " I am a citizen 
of no mean country" — to whose up-building and 
welfare he had devoted a long and honorable life, 
with an influence reaching beyond the immediate 
scene of his active duties. We may well suppose 
that his eye often rested with delightful interest upon 
the ancient promise t to the people of God — " He 
hath cast the lot for them, and His hand hath divided 
it unto them by line : they shall possess it for ever, 
from generation to generation shall they dwell therein. 
The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad 
for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom 
as the rose ;" there is much in the passage which he 
would apply with peculiar happiness to the civil and 

* Mass. Hist. Coll., 24, 216. f Isaiah xxxv. 



88 

religious blessings bestowed on them, almost distin- 
ffuishinffthemas among " the ransomed of the Lord." 

Though he was " old and stricken in years," and 
the days were drawing " nigh that he should die," 
the circumstances do not indicate any other than a 
vigorous old age, as he died during an epidemic, 
which proved fatal to many. In the records of the 
church,* his death is registered thus — " Month 11. 
day 21. 1660. Mr. Isaac Heath, Ruling Elder in this 
church dyed & was buryed on ye 23 day," and 
again, in the memorabilia, in another portion of the 
volume,! is a more minute entry, showing the nature 
of his sickness. " 1660. 11 mo. The Lord was 
pleased to visit us with epidemic colds, coughs, agues 
and fevers, and " 21 day. Elder Heath dyed of a sore 
throat, being ye issue of his cold and fever." 

The Hon. John Hull of Boston, in his Memoranda 
of notable events, furnishes us with the popular esti- 
mate of his character, and adds a tribute to his mem- 
ory, dearer to the heart, and more eloquent in its 
simplicity and sincerity, than the pompous and elab- 
orate eulogy of place and circumstance. 1660, new 
style, "Jan. 21. Mr, Isaac Heith the Ruling Elder at 
Roxbury departed this life being about 75 yeares old, 
a man exemplarie for piety and fidelity in his charg, 
and likewise of good ability, the Good Lord make 
vs sensible off o'r pillars falling &i raise vp others 
with a double portion of their spirit."! 

* folio 476. t folio 476. t MS . 



89 

Thus honored and lamented he went down to his 
grave in peace, *' in a full age, like as a shock of 
corn Cometh in his season." As his was true excel- 
lence of character, not of external accomplishments, 
nor his happiness from outward circumstances, so was 
his burial in keeping with the simplicity of his life. 
It was almost two centuries ago, that on the twenty- 
third of January, a good company of the neighbor- 
hood assembled at the tolling of the bell, and carried 
the dead solemnly to his grave in the ancient burial- 
ground, and there stood silently, while he was buried 
out of their sight. No eulogy was pronounced,* for 
there was need of none; his life was before them; 
and in unison with its quiet, daily beauty, the stillness 
of the funeral scene was broken only by the voice of 
his friend and teacher, the Apostle, lifted in prayer. 

" Heaven waits not the last moment; owns her friends 
On this side death, and points them out to men ; 
A lecture silent, but of sovereign power ! " 

Thongh all loved him, there were but few in that 
gathering who were mourners bending over their 
dead. His brothers and his only child had gone be- 
fore him, and of his household, none were left but his 
aged widow, and their son-in-law, John Bowles, with 
three grandchildren of tender age, whom, having " no 
son to keep his name in remembrance," he had cher- 
ished as his own. One of these, John Bowles, then 
seven years old, he " dedicated to God in the minis- 

* Mass. Hist. Coll., 23, 94. 

8* 



90 

try, if it please Him to accept him." Thus was fin- 
ished the course of one of those good men, who 
planted New England, and whose energy, firmness, 
wisdom and virtue laid, deep and broad, the founda- 
tion of her prosperity and happiness. Such men are 
living sermons. An eminent writer* says, " It is a 
generous pride that intertwines the consciousness of 
hereditary freedom with the memory of our ances- 
tors," — a patriotic and filial sentiment, inculcating 
the study of their lives and actions, and the duty of 
perpetuating their memory. There was a special 
law among the ancient people of God, enjoining them 
" to show to the generations to come the wonderful 
works that He had done," and " commanding the 
fathers, tl at they should make them known to their 
children; that the generation to come might know 
them, even the children which should be born ; who 
should arise and declare them to their children, that 
they might set their hope in God."t 

The Fathers of New England dwelt upon this as 
of great importance. The Commissioners of the Uni- 
ted Colonies, in 1646, urged " that there should be a 
collection of special Providences of God towards his 
New England people; " and the Rev. Mr. Sheppard, 
in his "Election Sermon" in 1672, insisted upon 
the same object; and the Rev. Dr. Increase Mather, 
in his sermon before the General Assembly, May 23, 

* « Hallam's Middle Ages," New York ed., p. 429. 
f Psalm Ixxviii. 4-7. 



91 

1677, said, *' I pray you in the Name of the Lord, 
that a speedy & Effectual Course may be taken, that 
the great things that God did for our Fathers, be 
faithfully recorded and transmitted to posterity." 

Elder Heath was not married, probably, until late 
in life, and the children of Elizabeth, his only child, 
were born in his old age. She died five years be- 
fore her father, at the early age of twenty-five. 
The record of her death, made by the Apostle Eliot, 
shows the nature of her illness, and indicates her 
social rank. " 1655. In the beginning of ye 5th 
moneth, God sent an Epidemical Sickness and faint- 
ness : few escaped, many were very sicke, several 
dyed, as Elizabeth Bowles in our town, Mr. Rogers 
of Ipswich, the Reverend Pastor there, Mr. Samuel 
Eaton, and his wife, (late Mrs. Haines,)" and on 
the seventh of the same month, was " buryed, Eliza- 
beth Bowles, daughter to Elder Heath." * 



Of all species of Evidence, whether of kindred or 
of the possessions of individuals, the most satisfactory 
is afforded by their Wills and the inventories of their 
estates. t From them we obtain information of the 
manners and habits of our ancestors, an accurate 

* Eliot's Church Records, fol. 472, 

f Testamenta Vetusta : London, 1826. 2 vols. 
8 vo. The introduction to this work contains a full and 
interesting statement of the uses of these statistics, 
and free use has been made of it in the text. 



92 

knowledge of the form and value of the articles which 
constituted the furniture of their houses, their domestic 
utensils, beds, wearing apparel and armour, and their 
undisguised religious feelings and opinions. These 
are intimately connected with the domestic history of 
the country. The great value of chattels caused 
them to be described with a minuteness in wills and 
schedules, not only by persons of comparative insig- 
nificance, but even by the children of the royal fam- 
ily. If the value of this sort of information be doubt- 
ed, the same suspicion must apply to every thing 
which relates to former times. Of what matter is it 
who wrote Junius' letters ? yet some sixty volumes 
have been written upon that single question, and 
many more will be added to the catalogue. It is not 
curiosity only which is gratified by these inquiries, 
for by marking the alterations in manners and cus- 
toms, and tracing the gradual but certain progress of 
intellectual improvement, — the former exhibited by 
the approaching to existing institutions, and the latter 
by the removal of superstitions and bigotry, — we 
receive ample objects for philosophical reflection. 

The following table will be convenient for refer- 
ence in reading Elder Heath's will. 



93 



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94 

Elder Heath's Will. 

" Haueing my understanding and memory by ye 
good blessing of ye Lord I doe make this my last 
will and Testament as folio weth. 

first, I give and bequeath to my wife this my dwel- 
ling house * and orchard, barnes, house Lott with all 
my land in ye lower Calues-pasture both upland 
meadow and salt marsh, by estimation 27 acres more 
or lesse, ye same to have and hold, possess and en- 
joy after my decease, dureing ye tearme of her nat- 
urall life, if my wife thinke this too cumbersome for 
her shee shall be [at] liberty to Choose to have ye 
new end of my house and all roomes appertayneing 
to it and fourteen pounds a yeare payd duly vnto 
her by mysonne Bowles of ye Best that ariseth of ye 
lands. 

* His house was west of the road that led from Bos- 
ton to the meeting house. — EUis^ Hist. 121. 

"The tenth of March, 1642. It is agreed between 
Elder Isaack Heath and Captain Joseph Weld, that 
the sayd Isaac Heath shall make and maintaine all the 
outside fence from his house to the topp of the lane lead- 
ing up to the meeting house and so to Joseph Raulin's 
orchyard and Captain Joseph Weld, to make and main- 
tain the fence, quite through both their two lotts. 

Witnessed by John Johnson, John Bowles, 

and John Ruggles.'* 

''Every man is to have his hye way in his owne lott 
and to that end the lotts were first layd, they were order- 
ed and continued to reach to the common Road that 
Leads up the Hill by Isaack Heath and Robert Prentices 
howse lotts." — Raxbury Town Records. 



95 

All these lands and all other lands as they are m 
ye transcript of Roxbery (except about 6 acres in ye 
great lott which I have given my sonne Bowles, as 
long as he liueth and my part in ye 4000 acres which 
I give to ye schole in Roxbury, I give to my three 
Grand children JoJui Bowles, Elizabeth Botvles 
and Mary Bowles, to them and their heires foreuer 
immediately after myne and their grandmother's de- 
cease, alsoe I give vnto my sonne Bowles full 
power to let, sell and improue all these lands as 
they shall come into his hands for ye best educa- 
tion of ye children, flurther my minde Is that John 
Bowles shall be mayntayned at schole and brovght 
vp to learning, in what way I haue dedicated him to 
God, if it please Him to accept him. 

If my Wife Choose ye house and lands and they 
be not by due estimation worth 14 lb by ye year 
then my sonne Bowles shall make it vp soe much 
worth vnto her out of ye rent of my other lands. 

I giue vnto my Cozin Martha Brand 2 lbs. I 
giue to my kinsman Edward Mar ice 2 lbs. I giue 
to my sonne Bowles my searge coat and best hatt. 
I giue to Isaacke Heath ye rest of my weareing 
Apparell. 

My moueable goods both within doores and with- 
out and debts or state whateur of that kind I will 
that they shall be diuided into 4 equall pts betwixt my 
wife and my three Grand Children. 

I give to Mary Morice my kinswoman twenty 
shillings, my will is that if here be not provision suf- 



96 

ficient for to afford my wife what I haue giuen her, 
and to brmg vp John to learning I giue full power to 
my Sonne Bowles with ye aduise of my overseers, to 
sell my pond lott or wood lott in ye middle diuision 
foi ye supply of both. Alsoe I request my well be- 
loued Brethren Johii Eliot arid William Parke 
to doe ye office of loue to oversee ye fulfilling of this 
my last will and giue counsell at all tymes as need 
shall reqvire, to whom I giue as a token of loue each 
20 shillings to be paid yr one . . . ; my will is that 
before my moveables be diuided all my debts and 
dues shall be payde and my houseing conveniently 
repayre.l, also 1 allow my wife convenient firewood 
out of my nether woodlot, for her life time and I 
make my sonne Bowles sole executor of this my will 
whom I doe invest with full powers to sell, let and 
Improue ye estate and lands of his three children my 
Grand Children, to aske, receive and order all things 
till ye time which I doe set downe here following 
viz. when Elizabeth Bowles shall attayne to 18 
yeares or day of marriage all her pt of lands and 
goods shall be giuen to her — 

I giue to Johti Bowles when hee cometh to ye age 
of twenty one years beside what falls to him of his 
share in my goods a double portion in my land. I 
giue to Mary Bowles when she attaynes to 18 yeares 
of age or day of marriage her pt of my Goods and 
lands. 

If Benjamin Morice doe dutifully and duly serue 
out his time my will is that at ye end of his time he 



97 

shall receiue ye summe of fiue pounds to be payde 
vnto him by rny executor. By me Isack Heath. 

witnesses this 19th of ye lllh 1660. 
John Eliot, 
George Brand, 
John Stebbins, 

At a County Court held 31 1660, Mr. John 

ESidt, George Brand and John Stebbins deposed be- 
fore ye Court that haueing subscribed their names as 
witnesses were present when ye late Isaacke Heath 
signed and published this paper to be his last will 
and Testament, aud was of a sound disposeing minde 
when he soe did. 

Entered and Recorded this 2 November 1660." 
Suffolk Probate Rec, Wills, vol. 1. fol. 361, 2, 3. 

The autograph, preserved in the probate office, 
having been executed but two days before his death, 
and being in the hand-writing of Eliot, who was also 
a witness to it, plainly indicates the Apostle's pres- 
ence at the bedside of the dying Elder, doing the 
offices of friendship in his secular affairs, as well as 
in the sacred ministrations of spiritual guidance and 
consolation. 

" One eye on death, and one full fix'd on heav'n, 
Becomes a mortal and immortal man." 

Addressing himself to Eliot, who made faithful 

record of his words, he said, " I request you, my 

well-beloved brother, to do the office of love, to 

give counsel as need shall require for the Educating 

9 



98 

of my grandchildren, Especially my grandson, whom 
I have dedicated to GOD, if it please Him to accept 
him." Eliot faithfully and lovingly fulfilled this last 
request of his friend, in the Christian nurture of the 
boy, who was educated at Harvard College, and 
grew up to manhood and honorable eminence ; in his 
marriage to Sarah Eliot, consecrated by the benedic- 
tion of the Apostle, the friendship of the Teacher 
and Elder was happily perpetuated by the alliance 
of their grandchildren. 



The duties of a Ruling Elder were of so engross- 
ing a nature, * that Mr. Heath's possession of the 
office indicates the leisure secured by a competent 
estate, and there is nothing in the records of the town 
showing him ever to have held any civil or lucrative 
office. The inference is that he brought sufficient 
property from England,! which, at the time of his 
death, amounted to about £700, exceeding the aver- 
age value of estates at that period — but his heirs had 
a nobler, imperishable inheritance, 

" His conduct was a legacy for all. 
Richer than Mammon's for his single heir." 

* Mather's ^' Ratio Disciplinae,'^ p. 123. 

t John Tey in 1641 left legacies to "Mr. Elliot, 
Teacher of Roxbiirye, Jacob, Philip and Frances Eliot 
and Elder Heath.'''' Philip Eliot of Roxbury in his will, 
proved 11 Feb. 1657 desires his wife as his executrix to 
" doe nothing of moment without the counsel and appro- 
bation of my brother John Eliot, our Teacher, Elder 
Heath, Deacon Parks and John Ruggles senior, my dear 
brethren, whom I make my overseers." — N. Eng. Hist. 
Gen. Reg. H. 104, 5. Suffolk Prob. Rec. Vol. 1. 290. 



99 

That Elder Heath gave to religion the first import- 
ance and held his temporal affairs of secondary con- 
sideration was not, in his time, a peculiarity. John 
Carver and his associates of the " May-Flower " re- 
linquished, deliberately, homes and the possession 
and enjoyment " of this world's goods " and fled to 
the wintry, desert shores of the Western waste, 
here "to seek first the Kingdom of God and his right- 
eousness," — Isaac Johnson, Endicott,* Winthrop, 
Dudley, Bradstreet, Cotton, Eliot and the Massachu- 
setts planters, generally, did the same ; they wel- 
comed to this land of refuge, Morton of Charlestown, 
Oxenbridge of Boston, Gilbert of Topsfield, Thorn- 
ton t of Yarmouth, Walley of Barnstable, and many 
others of that noble band,t who, under the woful act 
of Saint Bartholomew's, 1662, paid the same price 
for the free worship of God ; all these by their lives 
give force and majesty to the following declarations, 
made in their solemn assemblies, and, by them, 
handed down for the instruction and guidance of af- 
ter generations. 

The Rev. John Norton of Ipswich, in 1659, said. 



* Boston Courier, Aug. 26, 1846. American Ant. 
Soc's. Trans, vol. iii. c. 

t Mather's Magnalia, Book VI. fol. 86. Mass. 
Hist. Col. V. 59. Ain. Quart. Reg. Feb. 1839, p. 259, 
Vol. XV. page 61, 70. Hist. Gen. Reg. Vol. I. 278, 
IV. 344. 



X Mather's Magnalia. Book III. fol, 4. 

LofC. 



100 

" it concerneth New-England * always to reniemherj 
that originally they are a Plantation Religious, 
not a Plantation of Trade. A spot of this vast wil- 
derness converted into cornfields, orchards, streets 
inhabited, and a place of merchandise, cannot de- 

* The Plymouth and Massachusetts settlements were 
of very different origin from the other plantations, but 
the celebrated Poet and Divine, Dr. John Donne, in 
his sermon before the " Virginian Plantation," in 1622, 
presents a very favorable view of that company. 

" As God taught vs to build houses, not to house our- 
selves, but to house him, in erecting churches to his glory: 
So God taught vs to make Ships, not to transport our- 
selves, but to transport him, that we might be witnesses 
unto him, unto the uttermost parts of the Earth to those 
poore souls to whom you are continually sending. Be- 
loved in him, whose kingdom, and Gospel you seek to 
advance, in this Plantation, let thy principal respect be 
the glorie of God, defer the consideration of temporal 
gaine, and studie first the advancement of the Gospell- 
of Christ Jesus." "That your principall end is not 
Gain nor Glory, but to gain soules to the Glory of God; 
this scales the Great Scale, this iustifies Justice itselfe, 
this authorizes authoritie, and giues power to Strength 
itselfe. Let the conscience be upright, and then the 
IS eales, VinA Patents and Commissions, are Wings; they 
assist him to tlye the faster. Let the Conscience be 
lame, and distorted, and hee that goes vpon Scales and 
Patents and Co7nmissions , goes vpon weak and feeble 
Crutches. When the Holy Ghost is come vpon you, 
your Conscience rectified, you shall have Power, a new 
power out of that; what to doel that followes, to bee 
Witnesses vnto Christ." " Apollos watered, hut Patd 
planted; he that begun this work tvas the greater man. — 
And you that are young now, may live to see the Enemy 
[the Papists] as much impeached l)y that place, and your 
friends, yea Children, as well accommodated in that 
place as any other. You shall have made this lland^^ 



101 

nomniate New-England," "if she fall away from 
her profession." " What was said of Samnium> 
they could not find Samnium in Samnium, will be 
verified concerning these churches, viz. that New- 
England is not to be found in New-England " ; three 
years afterward, in May 1663, the Rev. John Hig- 
ginson * of Salem, in his Election Sermon " before 

which is but as the Subtirbs of the old world, a Bridge, 
a Gallery to the new ; to ioyne all to that world, that 
shall neuer grow old, the kingdom of Heauen, You 
shall add persons to this kingdom and adde names to the 
Bookes of our Chronicles, and to the Booke of Life." 
*' For, for that, which is especially in my contemplation, 
the conuersion of the people, as I have receiued so I can 
giue this testimonie, that of those persons, who have sent 
in moneys, and concealed their Names, the greatest part, 
almost all, have limited their Deuotion and Contribution 
vpon that point, the propagation of Religion, and the 
Conversion of the people." " O God, Looke graciously, 
and looke powerfully vpon this Body, which thou hast 
been now some yeeress in building and compacting to- 
gether, this Plantation." 

Yet this colony was, in fact, a commercial and a penal 
colony. Dr. Donne in the sermon already quoted, said 
of " the Plantation," " It shall redeem many a wretch 
from the Lawes of death, from the hands of the Execu- 
tioner, vpon whom, perchance a small fault, or perchance 
a first fault, or perchance a fault heartily and sincerely 
repented, perchance no fault, but malice, had otherwise 
cast a present and ignominious death. It shall sweepe 
your streets, and wash your doores, from idle persons, 
and the children of idle persons and employ them : and 
truely, if the whole countrey were but such a Bridewell, 
to force idle persons to work, it had a good vse". But 
the unlikeness of this to the New England colonies, is 

* Boston Courier, Sept. 16. 1846. 
9* 



102 

the General Court of the Massachusetts Colony," 
said " our Saviour Christ hath commanded, seek first 
the Kingdom of God and the righteousness thereof, 
and all other things shall be added, Mat. 6. 33. Ac- 
cordingly when the Lord stirred up the spirits of so 

too distinct — compare not only their commercial and ag- 
ricultural statistics, which are the growth, the practical 
effects of elementary principles, but the moral and edu- 
cational results — Under the Administration of Gov. 
Berkley in 1643 the Assembly passed an act which not 
only forbade the New England Clergy " to teach or 
preach publicly or privately," but ordered also " that 
the govenor and council do take care that all non-con- 
formists shall be compelled to depart the colonic with all 
conveniencie." By this measure they banished, at least 
one, ol their wealthiest and most respectable planters, 
with many others, to New England. This same Berke- 
ley who was Governor of that Colony nearly forty years, 
and whom Charles II., called an " old fool," in an offi- 
cial document in June, 1671, said, " we have forty-eight 
parishes and our ministers are well paid, and by my con- 
sent should be better, if they would pray oftener and 
preach less ; but, as of all other commodities, so of 
this, the worst are sent us, and we have few that we 
can boast of, since the persecution in Cromwell's tyran- 
ny drove divers worthy men hither. Yet I thank 
God, there are no free schools, nor print- 
ing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. 
For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects 
into the wjrld, and printing has divulged them, and libels 
against the best governments." See also the letters of 
Giles of Virginia in the Richmond Enquirer, in January 
1818, against general education. 

" A sermon vpon Acts 1. 8. preached to the Honora- 
ble company of the Virginian Plantation, 13 Novemb. 
1622, by John Donne Deane of Saint Paul's, London. 
London. Printed for Thomas lones, 1624." 2d Ed. 
not in his works in folio — passim. New Eng. Hist. Gen. 
vol. I. 348. 



103 

many of his People to come over into this Wilder- 
ness, it was not for worldly wealth, or a better Live- 
lihood, here for the outward man : the generality of 
the People that came over professed the contrary : 
nor had we any rational Grounds to expect such a 
thing in such a wilderness as this. 

" And though God hath blessed his poor People 
here with an Addition of many earthly Comforts, 
and there are those that have increased here from 
small Beginnings to great Estates, that the Lord may 
call this whole Generation to witness and say, O 
Generation seethe Word of the LORD,^are I been 
a Wilderness unto you 7 Jer. 2. 32. O Genera- 
tion see ! Look upon your Towns and Fields, look 
upon your Habitations, and Shops, and behold your 
numerous Posterity, and great Increase in the Bless- 
ings of the Land and Sea, Have I been like a Wil- 
derness unto you ? We must needs Answer, JVo, 
Lord, thou hast been a gracious God, and exceed- 
ing good unto thy Servants, ever since we came into 
this Wilderness, even in these earthly Blessings, 
we live in a more plentiful and comfortable manner 
than ever ive did expect. But these are but Addi- 
tions, they are but Additional Mercies, it was anoth- 
er Thing and a better Thing that we followed the 
Lord into the Wilderness for. 

My Fathers and Brethren, this is never to be for- 
gotten that New-England is originally a Planta- 
tion o/" Religion, not a Plantation of Trade. 

" Let Merchants and such as are increasing Cent 



104 

per Cent remember this : Let others that have come 
over since at sevei'al Times understand this, that 
worldly Gain was not the End and Design of the 
People of New England, but Religion. And 
if any man amongst us make Religion as twelve, 
and the World as thirteen, let such an one know he 
hath neither the Spirit of a true JVew-England Man , 
nor yet of a sincere Christian,* &c." 



The twenty-fiue of ye eleventh month 1660. 

An Inventory of all ye goods and whole estate of 
Elder Isaac Heath late of Roxbery deceased. 

Imprimis. — All his weareing apparell giuen away 
by his will not prized. 

It. a dwelling house with barne, stables and 
other outhouses with two orchards and the home 
lott, £200.00.00. 

It. twenty seaven acres of meadow 
and upland in ye lower calves pasture 100,00.00. 

It. sixe acres of Arable land inclosed 
taken out of the upper Calves-pasture and 
about three roods of meadow Adjoyn- 
ing vnto Isaack Morrells his wood Lott 
with a wood Lott abt twelve acres 100.00.00 

It. seaven Cowes, three heifers 
and 1-2 heifer 43.13.00 

It. two mares, two colts and a 
halfe Colt 39.00.00 

It. in plate and spoones at 6s pr 
ounse 008.01.00 

It. in plate at 5s an ounce 002.00.00 

* Prince's " Christian History," pp. 66. 68. 



105 

It. in hay in ye barne and stables 007.10.00 

It. five small swine 003.00.00 

It. in fourty eight bushels of pease 009.12.00 

It. in Barley 17 bushels at 4s 6d 003.00.00 

It. in Indian Corne forty bushels 006.00.00 

It. five bushels of w^heat and one of 
mault 001.00.00 

It. one musket and two swords 000.16.00 

It. seaven flitches of Bacon and beefe 
in ye tub 005.00.00 

&c. «&c. 

It. one Tapestry Couerlet 007.00.00 

It. 4 yards of cotton 000.12.00 

It. two carpets 002.04.00 

It. thirty four pieces of pewter new and 
old great and small. " bed ticking, perri- 
stone, 003.00.00 

Irish stockings, blue linen. Kersey , 
Searge,''' &c., <&c. 

It. one bedstead, Curtaines, valence, one 
Rugg,* two bolsters five pillows and 4 blan- 
kets, one bolster with a featherbed with 
two coverlets 020'00.00 

carts, wheels, ploughchains, wedges, 
beetles, axes, " one road saddle," &c. 

* A coarse woolen cloth, anciently used as a bed cover. 
The following curious document shows the word to have 
been in common use. " The Deposition of Edward 
Euerett A^ed Thirty foure yeares or thereabouts Testi- 
fieth and Saith yt on ye Last Lord's Day beinge ye 23th 
of this month of January I beinge But just gotten Into 
my Bed and ye maid Coueringe mee wth the Rugg, Goody 
Hale Appeared to mee Between Nine and ten a clocke 
in ye morneinge vpon wch I Rise and called to seueral 
People Standing by and tould them there was Goody 
Hale and soe flung my hatt to her and vpon that shee 
Vanished out of my sight and farther saith not." — 
Sworn in Court prio feby 1680 pr. Isa. Addington, Cler, 



106 

It. in bookes, 002.12.00 

It, two fatt Calues 002.08.00 

It. in Benjamin* Morice's time 005.00.00 

//. due from William Lyon 000.02.00 

It. due from Deacon Trusdall 002.05.00 

It. 2 acres and a halfRyeon ye ground 002.20.00 
It. Money in hand and due to be paid 035.09.0s 
It. due from Joseph Wise remaining for 
a Cow &c. 002.10.00 

It. in flax and flaxen yarn, in wool and 
woollen yarne 002.13.00 

It. due from Daniell Aynsworth 002.20.00 

Sum total £671.06.04 
It. paid in funerall expenses and lega- 
cyes and small debts that he owed 024.11.02 

It. more left in ye executors hands to 
repaire houses and fences and to defray 
other small debts 25.00.00 

//. ye remainder of all the movables to 
be divided into 4 pts according as is ex- 
pressed in ye will. 

This accott was taken and accepted by the over- 
seers of ye said will before this Inventory was put 
into ye Court. 

John Eliot 
witnesses Willm Parke. 

Isaac Morrell 
Thomas Weld. 

Att a meeting of ye magistrates 14th March 1660, 
present the Gouer'r, Major Hump. Atherion, Mr. 

* A branch of the Morris family removed to New 
Roxbury or Woodstock, at its first planting. Commo- 
dore Charles Morris of the U. S. Navy is one of its 
most distinguished sons. 



107 

Danforth Recorder at ye Governors house. John 
Bowles deposed before the magistrate that this is A 
true Inventory of ye estate of ye late Isaac Heath, 
his father in law, to the best of his knowledge, when 
hee knowes more hee will discouer it. 

Suffolk Probate Records, Inventories, Vol. 4. fol. 12. 
13. 14. 

Mrs. Heath survived her husband but four years, 
and died when about seventy years of age ; * her 
christian faith and character, her generous care for 
all about her, her amiable temper and benevolent rec- 
ognition of all with whom she was connected, 
beautifully appears In this last solemn act of her 
life. 

Her will mentions her relationship or connec- 
tion with so many of the Roxbury families, as 
Burnet, Gary, Johnson, Waterman, Brand, Morris, 
&c. that it furnishes a strong reason for believing 
they were from one locality or neighborhood in Eng- 
land. Studied ingenuity could hardly have named 
so many relationships, without indicating the family 
name of the testatrix. Patient inquiry in regard to the 
several surnames mentioned in the will, might possi- 
bly lead to the discovery of her maiden name. 

January 1. 1664. 
In the name of God Amen. I Elizabeth Heath of 
Roxbury, widow, being, by the mercy of God, per- 

* " 1664, month, day, 14, Elizabeth Heath, widow of 
Elder Heath, buryed."— Eliot's Ch. Rec. fol. 47S. 



108 

feet in minde and will, though very weak in Bod}'-, 
Doe hereby make ordaine and publishe this to be my 
Last will and Testament, hereby Revoking all my 
former wills if any. 

ffirst. I giue and resighne up my soul into the armes 
of my Dear Lord and Sauior Jesus Christ my re- 
deemer, hoping and beieuing at my resurrection by 
his meritts to partake of his Glory. And for my 
Body I Commit to ye earth to be Decently Literred 
by my executr: And for the portion of goods and 
estate the Lord hath lent me I giue Bequeath and 
Dispose of as ffolloweth.* 

* The minuteness of detail in these ancient documents 
is exhibited in the following instances taken from Sir 
Harris Nicolas' " Vetusta Testamenta," Lady Hastings 
in her will, 1503, mentions her " bed of arres, tillor and 
counterpane, late borrowed of me." p. 452. William, 
Earl of Southampton, in his will, made 10 Sept. 1542, 
proved 16 Feb. 1542-3 gives" to my nephew John Cutts, 
[nephew of his half-sister Lucy Browne and son of John 
Cufts] C marks, twelve feather beds and all the furniture.^^ 
pp. 588. 709. Elizabeth, Lady Scrope, of Upsall and 
Marsham, widow of Henry, Lord Scrope, of Bolton, 
daughter of John Neville, Marquess of Montague, in her 
will made 7th March. 9 Henry VHL 1518 gave " to 
Mary daughter in law unto Thomas Gi ey. Marquis of 
Dorset my bed that my Lord Marquis loas wont to lie on: to 
my Lady Lucy my sister [wife of Sir Anthony Browne] 
a primer and a psalter which J had of the gift of King 
Henry the Seventh's mother; to my niece Lucy, her 
daughter, who is " [engaged to be] "married to John 
Cutt, the son of Sir John Cutt, but in case she do disa- 
gree " [to the proposed marriage] " she shall have no 
part of my lands ; there be three chauntries in my in- 
heritance in Borow in Cambridgeshire; my niece Lucy 



109 

Impr. I giue unto my sister Burnet, and Mar~ 
tha Brand my two Cowes heer at home after my 
Death, my sister to take her Choice, and my will is 
they Bee kept this winter of my Hay, without any 
charge to them. 

It. I giue to Isaack Burnet Lately gone to sea 
my young sow, if he either Come Back or send be- 
fore ye next summer, else my will is that his mother 
my sister shall have her and that she [be] kept at 
my charge until then. 

It. I giue unto Jacob J\''ewell''s wife twenty 
shillings to be pd her within one moneth after my 
Death hulfe in money the rest in Come. 

It. I giue unto Isaack Jones his daughter, that 
he had by Hannah Heath fifteen shillings, fine in 
money the rest in corne, paid her within a month 
after my Death, 

It. I giue to Mary Heath 20s and to J\''icholas 
Williams as much to be paid to either of ym 
within the moneth after my Death. 

It. I giue to Thomas Morey ten shillings to bee 
paid him a little before his time of service [illegi- 
ble] and as much to his mother that now is to be 
paid her within a moneth after my Decease. 

It. I giue to my cousin Garry the Old man, 
twenty shillings and to Goodman Fruysell that mar- 
Browne now called Lucy Cutis; And I constitute Sir 
John Cutts, Knight, and mv neice Lucy Browne my 
Executors." proved 9 Dec. 152L 12 Henry VIIL 

10 



110 

ried Goodman Buskelh Daughter as much to be pd 
each of them within one moneth after my Death. 

It. I will and appoint that my Cousinne Capt. 
Johnson shall have the ffirst yeare's increase of my 
two Cowes at Isaack Williams. 

It. I giue to my Grandchildren my three Cowes 
two Being at Isaack Williams and that I left to 
Goodman Bush. 

Item, my Minde and Will is that my sister Wa- 
terman shall have the use of my Mare during her 
Life and I give her unto John Bowles my grand- 
child, and my wearing apparrell I giue Between my 
sister Burnett and Waterman. 

And I make, Ordaine and appoint my sonne in 
Law Bowles Executor of this my will. 

At a Meettng of the Magestrates and Recorder 
19th Jan. 1664 Power of Administration to the es- 
tate of Elizabeth Heath Widow is Granted to John 
Bowles to performe the Imperfect will above writ- 
ten as neer as may bee. Bringing in an Liventory of 
the Estate to the next Court. 

Present. Edw. Rawson, Recorder. 

jR. Bellingham, Depty. Gouerr. 
Capt. Gookin. 
and Recorder. 

Suffolk Probate Records,WilU, Vol. 1. 442. 

Jan. 31, 1664. William Parke and Thomas 
Welldy appraised the estate — Mr. William Crowne, 
John Pulmeter, Robert Pepper^ Jonathan Peake^ 



Ill 

Hugh Thomas, Arthur Gerye, Mrs. Meades, Jno. 
Polly and Joseph Wise owed the estate, — which is 
Dr to Legacies bequeathed." to George Branne, 
and to her sister Burnum, to her sister Waterman — , 
to Capt. Johnson the use of 2 Cowes 1 year, and af- 
ter giuen unto John Bowles children, to James ffris- 
sell, Edward Morris, and Isaack Bur nop— ^' to Cof- 
finne and Rayles," wine at her Burial," *' to Maids 
wages, " to the church " To Edward Morrisse, to 
Thomas Hawley, to Joshua Lambe, Goodman 
Grijjfinne — Goodwife Tillar. &c. &c. 

ffeb. 8. 1664. Jno. Bowles deposed in Court that 
this paper Containes a true Inventory of the Estate 
of Widow Heath his Late Mother in Lawe, to his 
Best Knowledge and when he Knowes more he will 
discouer it. 

Edward Rawson, Recorder. 

Suffolk Probate Records, Inventories, Vol. 4 fol. 
217, 218. 

The late Gen. William Heath left a brief record of 
his descent from William, the brother of Isaac Heath, 
which is presented in tabular form on the next page. 
The Apostle Eliot's record says of William, that 
'* he came to this Land in the year 1632, and soon 
after joyned to the Church ; he brought 5 child- 



ren." 



112 



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yrs. 


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bridge ; mai 
1759 ; d. Oc 


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g Heath = 


Anna, d 
aged 86 


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744. 


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d. Jan 


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May 


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b. Mai-ch 
24, 1814. 


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Brissot de Warville who visited the United States 
in 1788, thus mentions Gen. Heath : 

** Mr. Adams is not the only man distinguished in 
this great revolution, who has retired to the obscure 
labours of a country life. General Heath is one of 
those worthy imitators of the Roman Cincinnatus : 
for he likes not the American Cincinnati: their 



113 

eagle appears to him a gewgaw, proper only for chil- 
dren. On shewing me a letter from the immortal 
Washington, whom he loves as a father, and reveres 
as an angel — this letter, says he, is a jewel which, in 
my eyes, surpasses all the eagles and all the ribbons 
in the world. It was a letter in which that General 
had felicitated him for his good conduct on a certain 
occasion. With what joy did this respectable man 
shew me all parts of his farm ! What happiness he 
enjoys on it ! He is a true farmer. A glass of ci- 
der, which he presented to me with frankness and 
good humour painted on his countenance, appeared 
to me superior to the most exquisite wines. With 
this simplicity, men are worthy of liberty, and they 
are sure of enjoying it for a long time." 



10* 



BOWLES. 



" One thing, therefore, ought to be aimed at by all men ; 
that the interest of each individually, and of all collectively, 
should be the same •, for if each should grasp at his individual 
interest, all human society would be dissolved. And also, if 
nature enjoins this, that a man should desire to consult the 
interest of a man, whoever he is, for the very reason that he 
is a man, it necessarily follows that, as the nature, so the 

interest, of all mankind is a common one The principle 

that they have nothing in the way of right, no society with 
their fellow citizens, for the sake of the common interest, 
tears asunder the whole social compact It is more con- 
trary to nature that man, for the sake of his own gain, should 
wrongfully take from man, than that he should endure all 
such disadvantages, either external or in the person, or even 
in the mind itself as are not the effects of injustice. For that 
virtue. Justice, is the mistress and queen of all virtues." 
— ICicero's Offices, Book iii. ch. vi. And to the same effect 
see also Hume's Essays, Part ii. Essay 11. 

" Alas, sir ! a commonwealth ought to be but one huge 
Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an 
honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body ; for look 
what the grounds and causes are of single happiness to one 
man, the same ye shall find them to a whole state, as Aris- 
totle, both in his Ethics and Politics, from the principles of 
reason, lays down : by consequence, therefore, that which is 
good and agreeable to monarchy, will appear soonest to be 
so, by being good and agreeable to the true welfare of every 
Christian; and that which can be justly proved hurtful and 
offensive to every true Christian, will be evinced to be alike 
hurtful to monarchy : for God forbid that we should separate 
and distinguish the end and good of a monarch, from the end 
and good of monarchy, or of that from Christianity." — [Mil- 
ton's Prose Works ; Bohn's Ed. II. 391. " Of Reformation 
in England." 

" Free commonwealths have been ever counted fittest and 
properest for civil, virtuous, and industrious nations, abound- 
ing with prudent men worthy to govern ; monarchy fittest 
to curb degenerate, corrupt, idle, proud luxurious people." — 
[Ibid. p. 360. 

"So absolute was the authority of the crown, that the 
precious spark of liberty had been kindled and was preserved 
by the Puritans alone 5 and it was to this sect that the 
English owe the whole freedom of their constitution." — 
Hume. 



117 



New England has the proud distinction of tracing 
her origin to causes purely moral and intellectual — a 
fact which fixes the character of her founders and 
planters as elevated and refined, —not the destroyers 
of cities, provinces and empires, but the founders of 
civilization in America. 

The quarrel of Henry Vlllth. was more about su- 
premacy than the fauUs of the papacy; and the "bish- 
ops, renouncing the pope, still hugged the popedom 
and shared the authority among themselves," perse- 
cuting the dissenters none the less that Henry VHL 
was the spiritual head of the Church ! They assim- 
ilated the worship of the Church of England to the 
papal ritual, and enforced the laws against the pa- 
pists, with forbearing lenity, though they objected to 
the established religion as a whole, and were, in fact, 
most obnoxious to the law, while they persecuted 
the Puritans, who excepted, almost exclusively, to 
*Hhe chaff of overdated, senseless ceremonies, retain- 
ed as a dangerous earnest of sliding back to Rome, 
and serving only, either as a mist to cover nakedness 
where true grace is extinguished, or as an interlude to 
set out the pomp of prelatism." 

Elizabeth was persuaded that to alter the ecclesiaa^ 



118 

tical polity, or put down the bishops* would move se- 
dition, which she feared and hated more than error, 
and thus religion and humanity were made secondary 
to her own royal security and interests. In the sec- 
ond year of her reign the half reformed! liturgy of 
Edward VI. was confirmed and " from that time fol- 
lowed nothing but imprisonment, troubles, disgraces 
on all those that found fault with the devices of the 
Convocation and straightway they wei'e branded with 
the name of Puritans." 

* " No bishop, no king," a trim paradox, and that ye 
may know where they have been a begging for it, I will 
fetch you the twin brother to it out of the Jesuits' cell : 
they feeling the axe of God's reformation, hewing at the 
old and hollow trunk of papacy, and finding the Spaniard 
their surest friend, and safest refuge, to soothe him up in 
his dream of a fifth monarchy, and withal to uphold the 
decrepit papalty, have invented this superpolitic aphor- 
ism, as one terms it, "One pope and one king." 

And now they would persuade regal power that if they 
dive, he must after. " No bishop, no king." — Milton^s 
^^ Republic in England. ^^ 

f Among some pious, well-meaning men it is common 
to inveigh against the Reformation, to deprecate and ex- 
aggerate the evils that it created, by the excesses of lib- 
erty and sigh with holy grief over the lack of reverence 
for' the dusty fragments and legends called "the fathers" 
and the heathenish mummeries which ignorance and su- 
perstitious devotion foisted into the Christian Church. 
They rejoice over the disputes and dissensions of the 
thinking, living puritans, as proofs of weakness, while 
they really develope the great principles of religious hb- 
erty. Let them go to Rome, and find quiet servile en- 
joyment in a befitting thraldom and bondage, free (rem 
the trouble and perplexity of thought, 



119 

Thanks be to God, the Poet, Statesman, Philoso- 
pher, John Milton, was a Puritan, In his 
book of the "Reformation in England," published 
in 1641, he sets forth, fully, the facts and principles 
which gave birth to New England, and as he makes 
express reference to us, I have adopted his as 
the most profound, elegant and authentic history of 
New-England, while she was yet living in Old 
England, — the embryo of the new State. Review- 
ing the history and principles of the reformation, so 
congenial to his own great spirit, he exclaims : 

" Ever blessed be He, and ever glorified, that from 
his high watchtower in the heavens, discerning the 
crooked ways of perverse and cruel men, hath hith- 
erto maimed and infatuated all their damnable in- 
ventions, and deluded their great wizards with a de- 
lusion fit for fools and children : had God been so 
minded. He could have sent a spirit of mutiny 
amongst us, as He did between Abimelech and the 
Sechemites, to have made our funerals, and slain 
heaps more in number than the miserable surviving 
remnant ; but He, when we least deserved, sent out 
a gentle gale and message of peace from the wings 
of those His cherubims that fan His mercy-seat. Nor 
shall the wisdom, the moderation, the Christian piety, 
the constancy of our nobility and commons of Eng- 
land, be ever forgotten, whose calm and temperate con- 
nivance could sit still and smile out the stormy bluster 
of men more audacious and precipitant than of solid 
•9-nd deep reach, until their own fury had run itself 



120 

out of breath, assailing by rash and heady approach- 
es the impregnable situation of our hberty and safe- 
ty, that laughed such weak enginery to scorn, such 
poor drifts to make a national war of a surplice 
brabble, a tippet scuffle, and engage the untainted 
honor of English knighthood to unfurl the streaming 
red cross, or to rear the horrid standard of those 
fatal guly dragons, for as unworthy a purpose, as to 
force upon their fellow-subjects that which them*. 
selves are weary of, the skeleton of a mass-book. — 
Nor must the patience, the fortitude, the firm obe- 
dience of the nobles and people of Scotland, striv- 
ing against manifold provocations ; nor must their 
sincere and moderate proceedings hitherto be unre- 
membered, to the shameful conviction of all their de- 
tractors. 

" Go on both hand in hand, O nations, never to be 
disunited; be the praise and the heroic song of all 
posterity; merit this, but seek only virtue, not to ex- 
tend your limits; for what needs to win a fading 
triumphant laurel out of the tears of wretched men ? 
but to settle the pure worship of God in his church, 
and justice in the state ; then shall the hardest diffi- 
culties smooth out themselves before ye, envy shall 
sink to hell, craft and malice be confounded, whether 
it be homebred mischief or outlandish cunning : yea, 
other nations will then covet to serve ye, for lordship 
and victory are but the pages of justice and virtue. 

" I proceed within my own bounds to show you 
next what good agents they are about the revenues 



121 

and riches of the kingdom, which declare of what 
moment they are to monarchy, or what avail. Two 
leeches tiiey have that still suck and suck the king- 
dom — their ceremonies and their courts. If any man 
will contend that cefemonies be lawful under the 
gospel, he may be answered otherwhere. This 
doubtless, that they ought to be many and overcost- 
ly, no true protestant will affirm. Now I appeal to 
all wise men, what an excessive waste of treasure 
hath been within these few years in this land, not in 
the expedient, but in the idolatrous erection of tem- 
ples beautified exquisitely to outvie the papists, the 
costly and dear-bought scandals and snares of im- 
ages, pictures, rich copes, gorgeous altar-cloths : and 
by the courses they took, and the opinions they held, 
it was not likely any stay would be, or any end of 
their madness, where a pious pretext is so ready at 
hand to cover their insatiate desires. What can we 
suppose this will come to ? What other materials 
than these have built up the spiritual Babel to the 
height of her abominations ? Believe it, sir^ right 
truly it may be said, that Antichrist is Mammon's 
son. The sour leaven of human traditions, mixed 
in one putrefied mass with the poisonous dregs of 
hypocrisy in the hearts of prelates, that lie basking in 
the sunny warmth of wealth and promotion, is the 
serpent's egg that will hatch an Antichrist whereso- 
ever, and engender the same monster as big, or little, 
as the lump is which breeds him. If the splendor of 
gold and silver begin to lord it once again in the 
II 



122 

church of England, we shall see Antichrist shortly 
Vvallow here, though his chief kennel be at Rome. 
If they had one thought upon God's glory, and the 
advancement of Christian faith, they would be a 
means that with these expenses, thus profusely 
thrown away in trash, rather churches and schools 
might be built, where they cry out for want, and 
more added where too few are ; a moderate mainte- 
nance distributed to every painful minister, that now 
scarce sustains his family with bread, while the pre- 
dates revel like Belshazzar with their full carouses in 
■goblets and vessels of gold snatched from God's tem- 
ple; which (I hope) the worthy men of our land will 
consider. Now then for their courts. What a mass 
of money is drawn from the veins into the ulcers of 
the kingdom this way; their extortions, their open 
corruptions, the multitude of hungry and ravenous 
harpies that swarm about their offices, declare suffi- 
ciently. And what though all this go not over sea ? 
It *vere better it did : better a penurious kingdom, 
than where excessive wealth flows into the graceless 
and injurious hands of common sponges, to the im- 
poverishing of goo'd and loyal men, and that by such 
execrable, such irreligious courses. 

'* If the sacred and dreadful works of holy disci- 
pline, censure, penance, excommunication, and ab- 
solution, where no profane thing ought to have ac- 
cess, nothing to be assistant but sage and Christianly 
admonition, brotherly love, flaming charity and zeal; 
and then according to the effects, paternal sorrow, or 



123 

paternal joy, mild severity, melting compassion : if 
such divine ministeries as these, wherein the angel 
of the church represents the person of Christ Jesus, 
must lie prostitute to sordid fees, and not pass to and 
fro between our Saviour, that of free grace redeemed 
us, and the submissive penitent, without the truckage 
of perishing coin, and the butcherly execution of tor- 
mentors, rook, and rakeshames sold to lucre ; then 
have the Babylonish merchants of souls just excuse. 
Hitherto, sir, you have heard how the prelates have 
weakened and withrawn the external accomplish- 
ments of kingly prosperity, the love of the people, 
their multitude, their valour, their wealth ; mining 
and sapping the outworks and redoubts of monarchy. 
Kovv hear how they strike at the heart and vitals. 

We know that monarchy is made up of two parts, 
the liberty of the subject, and the supremacy of the 
king. I begin at the root. See what gentle and be- 
nign fathers they have been to our liberty ! Their 
trade being, by the same alchemy that the pope uses, 
to extract heaps of gold and silver out of the drossy 
bullion of the people^s sins; and justly fearing that 
the quick sighted protestanVs eye, cleared in great 
part from the mist of superstition, may at one time 
or another look with a good judgement into these their 
deceitful pedleries ; to gain as many associates of 
guiltiness as they can, and to infect the temporal mag- 
istrate with the like lawless, though not sacrilegious 
extortion, see awhile what they do ! they engage 
themselves to preach, and persuade an assertion for 



124 

truth the most false, and to this monarchy the mosr 
pernicious and destructive that could be chosen. 
What more baneful to monarchy than a popular com- 
motion ? for the dissolution of monarchy slides apt- 
est into a democracy; and what stirs the Englishmen 
as our wisest writers have observed, sooner to rebel- 
lion, than violent and heavy hands upon their goods 
and purses ? Yet these devout prelates, spite of our 
Great Charter, and the souls of our great progeni- 
tars that wre&ted their liberties oat of the Norman 
gripe with their dearest blood and higl^est prowess,, 
for these many years have not ceased in their pulpits 
wrenching and spraining the text, to set at nought 
and trample under foot all the most sacred and life- 
blood laws, statutes, and acts of parliament, that are 
the holy covenant of union and marriage between the 
king and his realm, by prosecuting and confiscating 
from us all the right we have to our own bodies,goods, 
and liberties. What is this but to blow a trumpet, 
and proclaim a firecross to an hereditary and perpet- 
ual civil war ^ Thus much against the subjects' lib- 
erty hath been assaulted by them. Now how they 
have spared supremacy, or are likely hereafter to sub- 
mit to it, remains lastly to be considered. 

" But what do I stand reckoning upon advantages 
and gains lost by the misrule and turbulency of the 
prelates ? What do I pick up so thriftily their scat- 
terings and ditninishings of the meaner subject, 
whilst they by their seditious practices have endan- 
gered to lose the king one third of his main stock ? — ^ 



125 

What have they not done to banish him from his own 
native country ? But to speak of this as it ought, 
vtould ask a vohune by itself. 

^' Thus as they unpeople the kingdom by expulsion 
of so many thousands, as they have endeavored to 
lay the skirts of it bare by disheartening and dishon- 
oring our loyalest confederates abroad, so have they 
hamstrung the valor of the subject by seeking to ef- 
feminate us all at home. Well knou's every wise 
nation, that their liberty consists in manly and hon- 
est labors, in sobriety and rigorous honor to the mar- 
riage-bed, which in both sexes should be bred up 
from chaste hopes to loyal enjoyments ; and when 
the people slacken, and fail to looseness and riot, 
then do they as much as if they laid down their 
necks for some wild tyrant to get up and ride. Thus 
learnt Cyrus to tame the Lydians, whom by arms he 
could not whilst they kept themselves from luxury ; 
with one easy proclamation to set up stews, dancing, 
feasting, and dicing, he made them soon his slaves. 
I know not what drift the prelates had, whose 
brokers they were to prepare and supply us either 
for a foreign invasion or domestic oppression : but 
this I am sure, they took the ready way to despoil 
us both of manhood and grace at once, and that in 
the shamefullest and ungodliest manner, upon that 
day which God's law, and even our own reason hath 
consecrated, that we might have one day at least of 
seven set apart wherein to examine and increase our 
knowledge of God, to meditate and commune of 
11* 



126 

our faith, our hope, our eternal city in heaven, and 
to quicken withal the study and exercise of charity; 
at such a time that men should be plucked from their 
soberest and saddest thoughts, and by bishops, the 
pretended fathers of the church, instigated by public 
edict, and with earnest endeavor pushed forward to 
gaming, jigging, wassailing, and mixed dancing is a 
horror to think ! Thus did the reprobate hireling 
priest Balaam seek to subdue the Israelites to Moab, 
if not by force, then by this devilish policy, to draw 
them from the sanctuary of God to the luxurious 
and ribald feasts of Baal-peor. Thus have they 
trespassed not only against the monarchy of England, 
but of Heaven also, as others, I doubt not, can pros- 
ecute against them. 

" Amongst many secondary and accessory causes 
that support monarchy, these are not of least reckon- 
ing, though common to all other states; the love of 
the subjects, the multitude and valor of the people, 
and store of treasure. In all these things hath the 
kingdom been of late sore weakened, and chiefly by 
the prelates. First, let any man consider, that if 
any prince shall suffer under him a commission of 
authority to be exercised, till all the land groan and 
cry out, as against a whip of scorpions, whether 
this be not likely to lesson and keel the affections of 
the subject. Next, what numbers of faithful and 
freeborn Englishmen, and good Christians, have been 
constrained to forsake their dearest home, their 
friends and kindred, wliom nothing but the wide 



127 

ocean, and the savage deserts of Amtrica, conld 
hide and shelter from the fury of the bishops ? O, 
sir, if we could but see the shape of our dear mother 
England, as poets are wont to give a personal form 
to what they please, how would she appear, 
think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon 
her head, and tears abundantly flowing from her 
eyes, to behold so many of her children exposed at 
once, and thrust from things of dearest necessity be- 
cause their conscience could not assent to things 
which the bishops thought indifferent ? What more 
binding than conscience ? What more free than in- 
differency ? Cruel then must that indifferency needs 
be, that shall violate the strict necessity of con- 
science ; merciless and inhuman that free choice and 
Hberty that shall break asunder the bonds of religion! 
Let the astrologer be dismayed at the portentous 
blaze of comets, and impressions in the air, as fore- 
telling troubles and changes testates : I shall believe 
there cannot be a more ill-boding sign to a nation (God 
turn the omen from us I) than \vhen the inhabitants,to 
avoid insufferable grievances at home, are enforced 
by heaps to forsake Their native country. Now, 
whereas the only remedy and amends against the de- 
population and thinness of a land within, is the bor- 
rowed strength of firm alliance from without, these 
priestly policies of theirs having thus exhausted our 
domestic forces, have gone the way also to leave us 
as naked of our firmest and faithfuUest neisihbors 
abroad, by disparaging and alienating from us all 



128 

protestant princes and commonwealths; who are not 
ignorant that our prelates, and as many as they can 
infect, account tliem no better than a sort of sacri- 
legious and puritanical rebels." 

It is a popular, but erroneous impression that the 
early Puritans were not churchmen. The larger 
number of the incumbent bishops and dignitaries of 
Edward the sixth's time, were at heart papists, yield- 
ing an unwilling obedience to the protestant changes, 
and welcoming the increased vigour of papacy, — after 
the death of Edward the sixth, — under the bloody 
reign of Mary, the tearful and worldly policy of Eliz- 
abeth, and the bigotry of James, Cranmer, and his 
active protestant cotemporaries, advocated those more 
radical principles, which, in the subsequent reigns 
were designated as puritanism. By them even John 
Knox was esteemed as a fellow-laborer. To Knox, 
Edward the sixth, with the full concurrence of his 
council, offered a bishopric — and to his influence 
Elizabeth was, in no small degree, indebted for the 
security of her throne, against the machinations of 
the adherents of Rome. 

The puritans knew "that the best way to keep the 
popish rooks from returning, was to destroy their 
nests." They labored for those alterations and re- 
forms, wliich Bonner, Gardiner, Laud — all men of 
like mind, differing only in opportunity — and those 
in sympathy with them hated ; and by opposing 
which, they hoped again to subject England to the 
dominion cf the papal hierarchy. They and their 



129 

successors could stigmatize protestantism as puritan- 
ism . 

Our New England puritans were churchmen. John 
Cotton, the great ecclesiastical father of New Eng- 
land, was a puritan churchman. Hutchinson,* in 
his Historical collections, has preserved ]Mr. Cotton's 
letter of resignation of the office of minister of the 
church in Boston, in Lincolnshire, v*hich he filled more 
than twenty years — addressed " to the right-reverend 
and my very honorable good Lord, John Lord Bisli- 
op,of Lincoln, at his pallace in Kurlalen." Then we 
have the declaration of " the Governour and the com- 
pany, [of Massachusetts] to the rest cf their Brethren 
in and of the Church of England,''^ from onboard 
the Arbella, at Yarmouth, Aprd 7, 1630, f clothed 
in eloquent and brotherly langu.ige. 1 hey said, "wee 
are not of those that dreanie of perfection in this 
world; yet we desire you would be pleased intake 
notice of the principals, and body of our company, as 
those who esteem it our honour to call the Church of 
England, from whence wee rise, our dear Mother, 
and cannot part from our native countrie, where she 
specially resideth, without much sadness of heart, 
and many tears in our eyes, ever acknowledging that 
such hope and part as we have obtained in the conj- 
nion salvation, wee have received in her bosome,and 
suckt it from her breasts : wee leave it not therefore, 

* Page 249. 

t Hutch. Hist. Mass. 1, 487. 



130 

as loathing that milk wherewith we w-ere nourished 
there, but blessing God for the parentage and educa- 
tion, as members of the same body, shall alwayes 
rejoyce in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any 
sorrow that shall ever betide her, and while we have 
breath, syncerely desire and indeavour the continu- 
ance and abundance of her welfare, with the inlarge- 
nient of bounds in the kingdome of Christ Jesus." 
It is not to be presumed that our Fathers had any 
special affection for Laud and his minions, nor is it 
singular that they, being driven from his territorial 
jurisdiction, should take all reasonable precautions 
to emancipate themselves from his ecclesiastical ty- 
ranny. 

How complaisantly Laud exclaimed, " what cla- 
Hiours and slanders I have endured for laboring to 
keep an Uniformity in the externa] Service of God."* 
" 'Tis not to be doubted," says that sycophant ap- 
ologist, IMonteith, " but that Archbishop Laud in- 
tended to grub up what he thought was the Tare of 
Puritanism from the Field of England." That royal 
lover of truth, Charles the First, the worthy master 
of so faithful a servant, said on the scaffold, " for the 
People, and truly, I desire their Liberty and Free- 
dom, as much as any Body whosoever; but I must 
tell you, that their Liberty and their Freedom con- 
sists in having of Government, Sirs, that is nothing 
pertaining to them, a Subject and a Sovereign are 

* Montoith's Ilist. of Troubles of Great Britain, fol. 
97, 192, 497, 



131 

clean difterent Things — I am the Martyr of the Peo- 
ple." 

Puritanism prevailed in Cornwall, Devon, Middle- 
sex, Essex, Kent, Lincoln, Norfolk, and other of the 
Eastern counties were imbued with hatred of papacy. 
The clergy of Lincolnshire were conspicuous for 
their opposition to the prelatical authority and intol- 
erance.* 

As the events of this period were of fearful import 
to our Fathers, and were to them things of life or 
death, the language — the very form and image of 
these acts — as they beheld them, must ever excite in 
our minds the most lively interests and this is a suf- 
ficient reason for presenting a few instances of official 
acts in their own words. Archbishop Laud, in his 
report t to Charles First in 1635, says that the Bish- 
op of rS^orwich " hath lately heard complaint of Mn 
VVarde of Ipswich for some toords uttered in ser- 
mons of his, for which he is now called into the 
High Commission" — " the greatest part of Wiltshire 
is overgrown with the humors of those men that do 
not conform." " The town of Boston, t which was 
a great nursery for nonconformity, has become very 
orderly and settled to obedience, but the town of 
Lowth is still somewhat to blame." " At Rens- 
worth iu Hertfordshire and some other places, many 

* Vaughan, 116, 369. 

t Rymer's " Fccdora." Tom. xix. fol. 588-591. 

X Rev. John Cotton fled from this town in 1633. 



1S2 

gid from their own churches by troops aficr th6 
Ministers, which is a common Fault in tlie South 
parts of that diocese, where the people are said to be 
Very giddy in matters of Religion." My Lord Bish- 
op of Winchester " returns to me there are divers 
obstinate Recussants in those parts, which I presume 
are certified to your Majestie's Judges according to 
Law." Of Laud's fiendish cruelty and inhumanity 
the histories of that period contain abundant evi- 
dence. 

Rushworth, in his Historical Collections, furnishes 
the following interesting documents. 

13. Caroliv April 1637> At this time it was en* 
deavored to block up the passage of those voluntary 
Exiles that were willing to go to another part of the 
World; where, as they said, they might not meet 
with such disturbances as they had here in Eng^ 
land, from the Ecclesiastical Courts. Here follow- 
eth the Proclamation prohibiting their Exportation. 

The King being informed, that great numbers of 
his Subjects were yearly transported into those parts 
of America, which have been granted by Patent to 
several persons, and there settle themselves with 
their Families, and whole Estates, amongst whom 
were many idle and refractory humors, whose only 
or principle End is to live without the reach of Au- 
thority; di.l Command his Officers, and Ministers of 
the Ports, not to suffer any Persons, being Subsidy 
Men, or of their Value, to pass to any of those plant- 
HtionS) without a license from his Majesties Commls- 



1^3 

sioners for Plantations first obtained ; nor any under 
the degree of Subsidy Men, without a certificate 
from the Justices of the Peace where they lived, that 
they have taken the oaths of allegiance and suprem- 
acy, and a testimony from the Minister of the Parish 
of their conformity to the Orders and Discipline of 
the Church of England. 



'o' 



May 1, 1638. The Privy -Council made another 
Order for Reasons importing the State best known 
to themselves, ' That the Lord Treasurer of England 
shall take speedy and effectual course for the stay of 
eight ships now in the River of Thames, prepared 
to go for JSTew-England, and shall likewise give or- 
der for the putting on Land all the Passengers and 
Provisions therein intended for that Voyage, and 
some days after His Majesty and the Board, taking 
into consideration the frequent Resort into New-Eng- 
land of divers persons ill affected* to the Religion Es- 
tablished in the Church of England, and to the good 
and peaceable government of this State, — However, 
upon the humble Petition of the Merchants, Passen- 
gers, and Owners of Ships now bound for JSTew-Eng- 
land, and upon the Persons by them represented to 
the Board, His Majesty was graciously pleased at this 
time to free them from a late Restraint, and to set 
them at liberty to proceed on their intended Voyage. 
Nevertheless His Majesty well knowing the factious 

* Rushworth's Hist. Coll. Part II. p. 408-9. 
12 



134 

disposition of the People (for a great part of them) 
in that Plantation, and how unfit and unworthy they 
are of any Support or Countenance from hence, in 
respect of the great Disorders and want of Govern- 
ment amongst them; whereof sundry and great Com- 
plaints have bin presented to the Board, and made 
appear to be true, by those that being well-afFected, 
both for Religion and Government, have suffered 
much loss in their Estates by the Unruly Factious 
Party did think fit and Order, That Mr. Attorney 
General shall forthwith draw up a Proclamation, ex- 
pressing his Majesty's Royal Pleasure to prohibit all 
Merchants, Masters and Owners of Ships from hence- 
forth to set forth any Ship, or Ships, with Passengers 
for JVew- Engl and , till they first obtained special 
Licence on that behalf, from such of the Lords of 
His Majesty's most Honorable Privy-Council as are 
appointed for the business of Foreign Plantations by 
special Commission."* 

According to this Order of the Council a Procla- 
mation issued forth, And upon the same grounds and 
reasons the Passage to the Summer Islands was bar- 
red by this Order of Council : 

Whereas it is observed, that such Ministers who 
are unconformable to the Discipline and Ceremo- 
nies of the Church, have and do frequently transport 
themselves to the Summer Islands and other His 
Majesties Plantations abroad, where they take liber- 

* Rushworth's Hist. Coll. Part H. p. 718. 



135 

ty to nourish and preserve their factions Schismati- 
cal humors, to the Seducing and abusing of his Ma' 
jestie's Subjects, and the hindrance of that good Con- 
formity and Unity in the Church which His Majesty 
is careful and desirous to Establish throughout his 
Dominions — We are therefore in His Majesties 
Name, and by His Express Command, to pray and 
require your Lordsliip to take present and strict or- 
ders that no Clerg])man be henceforth suffered to go 
over into the Summer Isles, but such only as shall 
have approbation on that behalf from Our very good 
Lords, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury his Grace, 
and the Lord Bishop of London. And for all such 
of them as already gone thither without such appro- 
bation, that you cause them forthwith to be remand- 
ed back hither." 

The severe censures in Star-Chamber, and the 
greatness of the Fines, and the Rigorous Proceedings 
to impose Ceremonies, the suspending and silencing 
Multitudes of Ministers, for not reading in the Church 
the Book of Sports to be exercised on the * Lord's 
day, caused many of the Nation, both Ministers and 
others, to sell their Estates, and to set sail for New- 
England, (a late Plantation in America,) where 
they hold a Plantation by Patent from the King." — 
Rushworth's Hist. Coll., p. 410. 

* The profanation of the Lord's day was a mark of 
Loyalty, and the keeping of it holy an act of disobedience 
— drunkennesB and swearing were placed among venial 
sins, when compared with fasting and prayer. 

iFalkland in Vaughan, 371. 



136 

Oldmixon* says of this: "To avoid the ^zg-ft 
Commission and Spiritual Courts, many Hundred 
Families, sober and industrious People, removed to 
the English Plantations in America. It could not 
but be a horrid Scandal to a Government to see its 
best Subjects chuse to leave their dear Country, their 
Dwellings and Trades, and wander with their Wives 
and Children in those distant Wildernesses, rather 
than continue exposed to the Tyranny of those mer- 
cenary Courts. One cannot think it was out of care 
of the publick Good, that a Proclamation was pub- 
lished to prohibit their transporting themselves and 
block up the passage of those voluntary Exiles, who 
were willing to go to another Part of the World, 
where, as they said, they might not meet with such 
Disturbance as they had met with here in England 
from Ecclesiastical Courts. What Echard quotes 
out of the Proclamation is not the less absurd and 
ridiculous for the Place from whence he took it. 
Because of the many idle and refractory thousands^ 
whose only or principal End is to live without the 
Reach of Government. False as the rest. They 
were the most quiet, industrious People in the King- 
dom, which every one knew they left with bleeding 
Hearts purely for Conscience sake to enjoy the Puri- 
ty and Freedom of their Religion, which the Rever- 
end Historian terms a Humour. Thus with him Dr. 
Reynolds, Dr. WalliSy Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Batesy 

* History of the Stuarts. London, 1730. Vol. 1, 
fol. 131. 



137 

Dr. Wincup, Dr. Gilpin, Dr. Collings, Dr. /a- 
comb, Dr. Annesley, Dr. Arthur, and thousands 
more, who were professedly of the same Religion 
with these Refugees, were humorous Felloxos. 'Tis 
not deny'd but that Laud, Wren, Pierce, and such 
Prelates, made these conscientious Christians so un- 
easy at home, that they ran the greatest Risks of 
Life, Heahh, and Living to avoid them. Had Care 
of the State been in Question, a Check upon that 
Tyranny which is called Authority in the Proclama- 
tion, would have given them immediate Ease, and 
the Loss of so many useful families have been pre- 
vented. But such Christian Compliance, so agreea- 
ble to charitable and benevolent Minds, was not to 
be expected from the Ministry at that time, nor from 
their Master. Larrey tells us, the persecuted Pro- 
testants croivded the Sea Ports to get over to Amer- 
ica. There was a Tribe of them, says Echard, 
with more Contempt than becomes him. This Tribe 
is now [1730] the populous and opulent Colony of 
New England. He adds. They cast off all Subjec- 
tion to the English Church ; * by which he means 

* " Here we must not omit so fair an opportunity to 
do Homage to the merit of those Pious and learned Doc- 
tors of our National Church, who at this Time preserved 
its Purity, amidst Laud's Innovations and Superstitions, 
who bore their testimony against his Severity, and who 
were zealous for a thorough reformation : for wherever 
we mention Archbishop Laud, and such Ecclesiasticks 
as the Majority of his Convocation consisted of, we do 
never intend the Church of England, as it was reformed 
in King Edward the Vlth's reign, and as it is now 

12* 



138 

they conform 'd to the Profession and Practice of all 
the Reforin'd Churches in Christendom, both in 
Faith, Worship and DiscipHne," He adds, " The 
next Truth is extorted from Mr. Echard : The Pu- 
ritans were generalhj free from outward Scandal, 
which is followed by a Reflection so Vulgar and so 
puerile that it is a Shame to repeat it, except some 
Particulars in Commerce. At Billingsgate the say- 
ing among the Fishery is, the Presbyterians will not 
swear, but they'll cheat. Billingsgate is not the 
worst Place from whence he fetches his Wit and his 
Raillery. The Puritans would not whore, but they 
would cozen ; and sure those who wou'd whore, 
drink, swear and profane the Sabbath, us'd a great 
deal of Conscience as to cheating, when it lay in 
their way ; which it did not do so often as in that of 
the Puritans, who had above nine Parts in ten of the 
Trade of the Nation." 

Before publishing the Apostle Eliot's concise me- 
moir of the Colonists of Roxbury — still existing, in 
his peculiarly neat, round, feminine autograph, in the 
Records of " the first church," the following passage 
from Forster's eloquent and able "Lives of the States- 
men of the Commonwealth of England"* is introduc- 
ed, further, to indicate the general character of those 
who planted this Co.mmonwealth, and also to exam- 

[1730] in his Present Majesty King George's ; but 
liaud's church, as it was corrupted in Charles Ist's 
reign."— fol. 148. 

* New York Edition, 1846, p. 161. 



139 

ine, briefly, the grounds on which the historical statC" 
merit that Cromwell and his most distinguished asso- 
ciates did seriously contemplate a removal to New 
England, is, of late, so confidently denied. Mr. Fors- 
ter having investigated the authorities and circum- 
stances pronounces it "utterly incredible and sup- 
ported by no worthy evidence,"* but he fails to con- 
vince us of the justice of his conclusion, for reasons, 
which — having given the quotation — we shall state as 
concisely as possible. The passage occurs m the life 
of John Pym. 

" What wonder if, in the midst of all this frightful 
despotism over the property and consciences of men, 
large numbers of the English people now sent their 
thoughts across the wide Atlantic towards the New 
World that had risen beyond its waters ! Such were 
the gloomy apprehensions and terrors with which the 
Old World was filled, that only two alternatives in- 
deed now seemed to many persons to remain; that as 
May expresses it t " Things carried so far on in a 
wrong way must needs either enslave themselves and 
posperity forever, or require a vindication so sharp 
and smarting as that the nation would groan under it," 
Too weakt to contemplate the last alternative, and too 

* p. 409. t History of the Long Parliament, p. 17. 

J Action, courage, decision, distinguished the Found- 
ers of New Ent^Iaiid, not less than the Republicans of 
old England, while circumstances developed in the former 
the most heroic endurance and resignation. The passive 
virtues most severely test men's souls. The rack requires 
more courage than the battle field. 



140 

virtuous to submit to the first, crowds of victims to 
the tyranny of Church and States now accordingly 
left their homes and their country, willing to encoun- 
ter any sufferings, privations, and dangers in the dis- 
tant wilderness they sought, because of the one sole 
hope they had, that there, at least, would be found 
some rest and refuge for liberty,* for religion, for hu- 
manity ! So extensive, however did the emigration 
threaten to become, that Laud thought it necessary 
to interfere at last, and — with a refinement of tyran- 
ny of which, it has been truly said, the annals of 
persecution afford few equally strong examples — to 
seek to deprive the conscientious sufferers of that last 
and most melancholy of all resources a rude, and 
distant and perpetual exile. On the first of May, 
1638, eight ships bound for New England, and filled 
with Puritan families, were arrested in the Thames 
by an t order in council. // has been a very popular 
* rumor of history,' that among the passengers in 
one of those vessels were Pytn, Hampden, Crom- 
well y and Hazelrig. 

* Our Fathers came, avowedly, for their own liberty 
to escape popery and its shadows ! In their youth- 
ful body-politic, toleration would have been suicidal — on 
either hand were rival and hostile colonies — Laud had 
his emissaries here, and their safety depended on the 
exclusion of others. They uniformly refused to admit 
others — but in the days of their strength and manhood 
they did and could safely open the door to all the world. 
The Puritan Independents were the Fathers of 
Toleration. Hutchinson's History, I, 82. 

f It is published on p. 133. 



141 

Were this anecdote authentic, the hand of fate 
had been visible upon Charles indeed ! But there is 
no good authority for it, and it is deficient in all 
the moral evidences of truth. The mind cannot 
bring itself to imagine the spirits of such men as 
these yielding so easily to the despair of country; 
and at this moment Hampden was the " argument of 
all tongues" for his resistance to ship-money, while 
to Pym the vision of the fatal meeting to which he 
had summoned VVentworth now became more and 
more distinct. Nor are we wanting of absolute cir- 
cumstances of proof, obvious enough to me, of the 
utter incorrectness of the statement. In the same 
part of Rushworth's Collections where the original 
matter is to be found, a subsequent proclamation may 
be seen also, wherein, after stating the seizure of the 
ships, the following passage occurs : " Howbeit,upon 
the humble petition of the merchants, passengers, 
and owners of the ships now bound for New England 
and upon the reasons by them represented to the 
board, his majesty was graciously pleased to free them 
from their late restraint, to proceed in their intended 
voyage." So that in fact, there is no reason for 
supposing that all who had embarked for JVew 
England on board the eight ships alluded to did not 
proceed to JVew England. JVb doubt they did so." 
" The only known authorities are Dr. George Bates, 
and Dugdale, both zealous Royalists, and, on this 
point, quite beneath consideration." 

The above is, literally, I believe, all the argument 



142 

and evidence which Mr. Forster adduces against the 
" anecdote," save this reference to it in the life of 
Cromwell. " I do not pause to tell the reader that 
the idea of Cromwell himself having entertained the 
notion of leaving England to seek a safer home in 
America is utterly incredible, and supported by no 
worthy evidence. Elsewhere in the lives, it has been 
refuted," [as above quoted entire]. " I have shown 
the worthlessness of the authority on which this story 
rests; and also, if it depends on the actual occurrence 
of the ships having been stopped by an order of coun- 
cil, the patriots ought to have left after all, for the 
embargo was speedily taken off the ships, and they 

left with all their passengers Such was not the 

cast of Cromwell's mind or temper. To leave Eng- 
land, where everything heaved with the anticipation 
of such a future — when the name of Hampden filled 
all mouths, and his quiet attitude of immovable reso- 
lution during the great trial of ship-money had made 
grateful all hearts — when the harvest of what had 
been sown by suffering approached to be reaped in 
triumph — nay, when the very corn was ripe and only 
waiting for the glancing sickle ! The bare thought 
is of ridiculous unlikelihood.^' 

Forster's emphatic and zealous denials of this — to 
us New Englanders — interesting incident, indicates 
the advocate than the historian and a feeling in rela- 
tion to it the reason of which is not apparent. It 
may be presumed that he has collected and sifted all 
the arguments and authorities bearing on the question 



W3 

and i propose a re-examination of them, which may 
lead the reader to credit the " anecdote" as a verit- 
able historical fact. I will first prove the popular 
enthusiasm in England, respecting America at that 
time. 

The Rev. Mr. Garrard, a newsmonger, wrote to 
the Earl of Strafford, about him who became Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts-, "Mr. Comptroller Sir Hen- 
ry Vane's eldest son hath left his father, his mother, 
his country, and thatforiune which his father would 
have left him here, and is for conscience' sake gone 
into New England, there to lead the rest of his 
days, being about twenty years of age. He had ab- 
stained two years from taking the sacrament in Eng- 
land, because he could get nobody to administer it to 
him standing. He was bred up at Leyden, and I 
hear that Sir Nathaniel Rich and Mr. Pym have 
done him hurt in their persuasions this way. God 
forgive them for it if they be guilty !" Forster in his 
life of Sir Henry Vane, thus vividly pictures the pub- 
lic mind at that day — the reader's particular attention 
is requested to the passages in italics — " America 
then stood forward to the imaginations of the enthu- 
siastic and the young, no less than to the oppressed 
consciences of worn and persecuted men, in the light 
of a promised land. The progress of her coloniza- 
tion had excited the utmost interest and curiosity 
throughout Europe; the fortunes of her first emigrants 
glimmering back into the world they had left,through 
the infinite wilderness and over the vast and dismal 



144 

t>cean, which now divided them from it, were strain- 
ed after by their friends with painful earnestness and 
wonder; and, at each successive ship that left with 
pilgrim passengers to her shores, the admiration and 
amazement of men increased, that 7iot of the poor^ 
the unfortunate, or the lowly, were these voluntary 
exiles, but rather, in the majority [?] of instances, 
the most refined and accomplished examples of the 
civilization of the age. JVot alone the scholar and 
the philosopher, but the wealthy, the high born, and 
the nobly bred were thus seen willingly abandoning 
the classic quiet,the splendor, the refinement of their 
homes, urged and sustained by those grand designs 
and hopes which having told them that mankind were 
born for a better system of government and a purer 
shape of society than existed in the Old TVorld~,no\v 
pointed out to them an opportunity of testing these 
exalted, aspirations in the new and strange lands 
which had started up so suddenly beyond the vast 
and dismal ocean. The work, thus begun by pure 
philanthropists, was carried out to an extraordinary 
extent by Laud's terrible system of Church govern- 
ment ; and for many months before Vane so sudden- 
ly passed his resolution of exile, successive multitudes 
of sufferers for conscience' sake had been driven from 
their native country to take refuge in New England, 
as the last home that was left for religion or for 
liberty." * 

* New York edition, p. 267. 



145 

In strange contrast and proximity with his opin- 
ion that the anecdote " is deficient in all the moral 
evidences of truth," he adds, " it is not without 
ground of a certain kind. Some years before its 
date the attention of the leading men among the 
patriots had been strongly directed to the subject of 
the Colonization of part of the North American Con- 
tinent, with a view to its affording a refuge of safe- 
ty and comfort to such of their party, or their 
families, as the sad troubles, which impended over 
England, might force them from their homes.^^ 
The subject had occupied even Sir John Eliot's 
thoughts in his prison, as a passage from one of 
Hampden's letters to him may serve to show. 
**The paper of consideration concerning the Planta- 
tion might be very safely conveyed to me, by this 
hand, and after transcribing, should be as safely re- 
turned, if you vouchsafe to send it to me." The 
result of all this consideration of the subject was the 
purchase of a large grant of land in the name of Lord 
Brooke and Lord Say and Sele ; and in 1635, ac- 
cording to Horace Walpole, these two Lords " sent 
over Mr, George Fenwick to prepare a retreat for 
them, and their friends, in consequence of which a 
little town was built and called by their joint names 
Saybrooke." Now, in this scheme, there can be 
little doubt that Hampden was concerned ; and I 
have found certain evidence, in Garrard's letters to 
Lord Stafford, that Pym was a party to it. ** Our 
East India Company," writes that mdefatigable 
13 



. 146 

newsmonger, " have this week two ships come homcj 
which, a little, revives them. The traders also into 
the Isle of Providence, who are the Earl of War- 
wick, the lord Say, the lord Mandeville, the lord 
Brooke, Sir Benjamin Rudyard, Mr. Pym, and 
others, have taken a prize, sent home, worth 
X15,000, by virtue of letters of marque, granted to 
the planters there, by his majesty, for some injuries 
done them by the Spaniards." The date of this 
letter is December, 1637 ; and from that date, as 
the prospects of the court darkened, the hopes of 
Pym and Hampden must have grown with the pas- 
sage of every day. Thus Foster, himself, affords a 
strong argument for the moral probability of the 
anecdote, arising from the general current of the 
public thought, " and of the leading men among the 
patriots." Hutchinson,* one of the most cautious 
and accurate writers, having mentioned Vane, 
Peters, — afterward noted in the civil wars, — and 
others, thus refers to this incident : " many other 
persons of figure and distinction were expected to 
come over, some of which are said to have been pre- 
vented by special order of the king, as Mr. Pym, 
Mr. Hampden, Sir Arthur Haslerigg, Oliver Crom- 
well, &c. I know," he says, " this is questioned 
by some authors, but it appears plainly, by a letter 
from lord Say and Scale to Mr. Vane, and a letter 
from Mr. Cotton," one of their most celebrated 

* Hist, of Mass., I, 44, 45, 433, 116. 



147 

scholars and divines, *' to the same nobleman, as I 
take it, though his name is not mentioned, and an 
answer to certain demands made by him, that his 
Lordship himself and Lord Brooke and others were 
not without thought of removing to New England, 
and that several other persons were in treaty about 
their removal also, but undetermined whether to join 

the Massachusetts or to settle a colony The 

answer made to the demands seems not to have been 
satisfactory; for these Lords and gentlemen soon 
after again turned their thoughts to Connecticut, 
where they were expected to arrive every year until 
after 1640.* 

Their lands in New Hampshire were not alienated 
till April 14, 1641, t and their second purchase in 
Connecticut, was not sold till December 5, 1644, t 
when their agent, Mr. Fenwick, conveyed it to the 
colonists. It is a fair inferance that their design of 
emigration was not wholly abandoned until that 
date. 

Now what are Mr. Foster's vaunted, " absolute 
circumstances of proof, obvious enough to me, of the 
utter incorrectness of the statement." Simply this 
one lone fact, that not long after the first of May, 
1638 — the date of the arrest — "upon the humble 

* Bancroft's Hist. United Stales, I, 411. 

t Belknap's Hist, of New Hampshire, 17, 30. 

X Hutchinson's Mass. I, 97. Col. Rec. of Connec- 
ticut, 31, 119. 



148 

petition of the merchants, paasengers, and owners 
of the ships now bound to New England, and upon 
the reasons by them presented to the board, his 
majesty was graciously pleased to release them from 
their late restraint, to proceed m their intended 
voyage." It was reported in New England that 
summer, probably by some of that company, that 
one of the reasons represented to the board, " was 
the great damage it would be to the Commonwealth 
in hindering the Newfoundland trade, and that near 
all the lords of the council did favor this plantation, 
and that " they were amazed to see men of all con- 
ditions offering themselves so readily for New Eng- 
land.* This feeble, uncertain ray of light, is all 
that has reached us, struggling through the obscurity 
of these two centuries, from that fleet of eight ships 
in the Thames, ready to bear away some of the best 
and noblest of England's sons. It had been well for 
Laud, the bloody mutilator of Burton, Prynne, 
Silbourne, Leighton, and others, the recreant Went- 
worth, the false, infatuated Charles, had they not 
detained the avengers of England's wrongs, and the 
vindicators of liberty. The unseen hand of God 
was there. 

Miss Aiken, to whom Foster and Bancroft are in- 
debted for their doubt in this matter, cites the " re- 

* Winthrop's Hist, of Mass., I, 266. 

■f Life and Times of Charles L, I, 472, 473. Lon- 
don edition. 



149 

lease from their late restraint," "from which," she 
infers, "it is plain that all who had embarked for 
New England on board those ships, must actually 
have proceeded thither," — non sequitur. Certainly, 
the king's license to depart is no evidence of their 
departure, much less that " all must have pro- 
ceeded ; " Bancroft* adopts the argument! and 
cites Winthrop t as "decisive," that "the whole 
company, as it seems, without diminution, arrived 
safely in the Bay of Massachusetts," but that author 
wholly fails to justify, or to seem to justify the asser- 
tion. On the contrary, his learned and accurate 
editor entertains no doubt of the incident in question, 
as plainly appears by his note, that many of high 
rank and fortune had designs of coming to this 
country, " in which most of them were prevented 
by the government, that had good reason, afterward, 
says Hume, to repent of such exercise of authority." 
Hume examined the evidence carefully and says 
that Hutchinson " puts the fact beyond all con- 
troversy," by conclusive corroborative evidence. 
Miss Aiken referring to the emigration schemes of 
Lord Brooke and his associates writes, " they finally 
abandoned the whole design and sold the land — this 
termination appears to have taken place about 1636, 
during the dependence of the great cause of ship 
money," and relies upon this supposed date of 

* Hist. United States, I, 411, 412. 

t Hist, of Mass. Bay, I, 266, 172. 
13* 



150 

abandonment, two years prior to the Thames inci- 
dent, as a presumption against its truth, but this i& 
an error, as it has already appeared that the " aban-' 
donment " did not occur till some years subsequently 
to 1638, when their agent finally returned to Eng- 
land. 

Miss Aiken's * remaining consideration against the 
story is that " so stirring an incident is not even 
hinted at by any contemporary account ; " a singular 
statement, showing a superficial examination of the 
authorities. Neal relates the story, saying, " if we 
may believe Dr. George Bates and Mr. Dugdale, t 
two famous royalists.'" Forster calls them " both 
zealous royalists, and on this point quite beneath 
consideration," and *' worthless," but without show- 
ing the reason of this denunciation ; Bancroft calls 
them " royalists writing on hearsay." 

Only two original authorities being cited, and they 
receiving such plentiful abuse as, "royalists writing 
on hearsay," " unworthy of credit," " on this point, 
quite beneath consideration," with more generalities 

* Mr. Alexander Young (Chron. Mass. 315,) says, 
" Miss Aiken was the fint to detect and expose this 
error of the historians ; " but Hutchinson, in 1760, 
wrote, '* I know this is questioned by some authors. "^ 
Why did not Mr. Alexander Young refer to Mr. Ban- 
croft's full examination of this fact, and his copious 
citations of all the authorities '? 

t Hist, of the Puritans, II, 316, 481, and the index 
says, "Oliver Cromwell designs to go to New England.'* 



151 

of a like nature, from some few who wonld fain de- 
prive the anecdote of a reputable parentage, — the 
case requires some account of them, whether they 
be so mendacious, so credulous, or so partisan, as 
to deserve such uncharitable epithets, or whether 
they be well-informed, respectable, and trustworthy 
gentlemen. Bancroft cites " Bates and Dugdale in 
Neal's Puritans," which shows that he did not con- 
sult the originals, but relies wholly on Neal, who 
does not so speak of them. The charge is a mere 
invention of Bancroft's. 

I will here premise that not one of the writers 
denies that these two authors do record the incident 
in question. 

George Bates * received his degree of Doctor of 
Medicine in 1637, was principal physician to Charles 
I. when at Oxford, to Oliver Cromwell the Protector, 
and to Charles II. He practised chiefly among the 
puritans, with whom he was identified. He was 
not a politician, but eminent as a physician and man 
of science, being the author of some learned works 
in Latin. His political interests or feelings were never 
sufficiently important or intense to justify the belief 
that he would invent a story like this, and it is diffi- 
cult to perceive what he could gain by so frivolous a 
fiction. His profession gave him eminent and una- 
voidable opportunities of learning the minute details 
and familiar thoughts of individual life. What more 

* Lived 1608—1669, 



152 

probable than that he might learn of so singular an 
incident in Cromwell's life, from the lips of the Pro- 
tector himself. His familiar and confidential inter- 
course with the puritans, incidental to his medical 
practice, necessarily gave him an intimate acquaint- 
ance with their designs and movements, at about 
this time, 1638, when the puritans were in the very 
" winter of their discontent," and New England was 
the land of promise and peace to oppressed con- 
sciences, — at this very time, I say, he was in the 
full tide of professional success, almost exclusively 
confined to the puritan party. Could any one have 
had better opportunity of knowing the truth of 
the matter in question ? He published his history, 
"Elenchus," in 1649 and 1660, while the facts 
were fresh and certain in his mind. Certainly it 
must be very strong rebutting testimony to discredit 
such a witness. 

Sir William Dugdale,* the eminent antiquary, was 
in London in 1638. As an antiquary, herald, and 
biographer, this incident was one of a class which he 
would seize and record with avidity. His great 
works are merely accumulations of facts, details of 
like nature, and his studies were of a character to 
produce caution and incredulity and not the lazy 
adoption of mere rumor. He stands one of the first 
among the authorities in English history. The sug- 
gestion of any collusion by such writers, though 

* Lived 1605—1686. 



153 

inimical to Cromwell, upon so trivial a matter is 
absurd. So that the incident has the authority of 
two independent, cotemporary, distinguished persons, 
engaged in very different pursuits, likely to know of 
the incident, from different sources, and without any 
inducement to the petty forgeries, or disingenuous- 
ness virtually charged upon them; but for the gravity 
of Forster and Bancroft, it would be beneath notice. 
Designed coincidence in narrating an occurrence so 
unimportant, is cousin-german to an imposibility. 

Lord Nugent in his life of Hampden,* makes no 
boastful display of learning, but indicates a most 
elaborate and philosophical investigation, by a mind 
thoroughly appreciating the cotemporary spirit and 
feeling, and writes, "Again the hopes of the country 
party almost died within them. Had it not been for 
a fresh act of cruel and unwise compulsion, which 
bereft the persecuted Puritans of the power of leav- 
ing to Charles, by their flight, an undisputed triumph 
over law and liberty, the whole struggle in this coun- 
try would have been abandoned, at least, by that 
generation, in despair." Lord Say, the Lord Brooke 
and Hampden, " had from their boyhood, lived to- 
gether as brothers, and the ties of their affection had 
been straightened by a close and constant agreement 
in publick life. To this wild and distant settlement 
[Connecticut] they had determined to retreat, in 
failure of their efforts for justice and peace at homej, 
aud they were, jointly, to become the founders of a 

♦ Vol. 1, 250—5, 



154 

patriarchal community." *' The immediate effect of 
this monstrous edict [of May 1, 1638] is rendered 
remarkable by an event which has thrown over the 
whole an air of strange fatality." *' In one of these 
[ships] had actually embarked for their voyage across 
the Atlantic, two no less considerable persons than 
John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell; the latter then 
little distinguished except for an opposition, with 
great spirit and ability, in his native county of Hun- 
tingdon, against the project of the Bedford level." 
"Thus, in the alternative between flight and resist- 
ance, the Government, as it were, bound down these 
eminent men to an opposite condition to that which 
they had chosen for themselves. Pride, character, 
and obligation to party and to principle, pledged 
them, so long as they should inhabit the country of 
their birth, to pursue the course they had begun. — 
Hampden and Cromwell remained; to act, probably, 
with very different views, certainly in very different 
circumstances." 

This is a sufficient vindication of the *' anecdote " 
to our belief in the absence of any original contra- 
dicting authority, and none can be cited. 

There remain a few general objections urged 
against the story, which I will briefly notice — as, 
" the mind cannot bring itself to imagine the spirits 
of such men as these, yielding so easily to the despair 
of country " — " to Pym the vision of the fatal meet- 
ing to which he had summoned Wentworth now 
became daily more and more distinct." *< To seek 



155 

a safer home in America, was not the cast of Crom-» 
well's mind or temper. To leave England, where 
everything heaved with the anticipation of such a 
future /" * "there are no circumstances in the lives 
of Hampden or Cromwell corroborating the story, 
but many to establish its improbability." "The 
pretended design was indeed unlike to Hampden," t 

Oliver Cromwell, | poor by five years farming at 
St. Ives, eminently pious, and notorious for his 
steadfast " aid and comfort " to the heroic clergy, in 
iheir passive and now lauded resistance to the ty* 
ranical laws of the established hierarchy, received, 
in 1635, a competency by virtue of his Uncle, Sir 
Thomas Steward's will, removed to Ely, where, as 
he told his own parliament in 1654, he lived " neith- 
er in any considerable height, nor yet in obscurity," 
and was, according to his professed eulogist, Car* 
lyle, "a most private and quiet man,'' until the 
king interfered with the draining of the Bedford fensj 
early in 1639, when he awoke to his labors, — which 
will not end till September 3, 1658, with all his 
earthly duties, — by his noisy activity at the head of 
the ** Bedford level " faction, became " well known 
to his friend and kinsman Hampden," as " one that 
would sit well at the mark," and by his popularity 

* Foster's Statesman. New York Ed. 161, 409, 410. 
t Bancroft's Hist. U. States, 1, 411, 412. 
t Lived 1599—1658. 



156 

•as "Lord of the Fens," was, in November, 1640, 
elected to Parliament from Cambridge, by the ma- 
jority of a single vote. It is said that his opponent, 
the Poet Cleveland, exclaimed, "that vote, that 
single vote hath ruined both Church and Kingdom." 
Thus it appears that at the date of the order. May, 
1638, Cromwell had nothing to suggest the prophetic 
" vision" with which Forster would clothe him and 
Hampden,* for then he was " a most private, quiet 
man." Cromwell was a rhapsodist, but not a vi- 
sionary, and I can see at the time of the order, no 
" improbability," " unlikelihood," or " absurd- 
ity," in his alleged embarkation for New England. 

His own words afford cumulative and irresistible 
evidence, that can leave no rational doubt of its 
truth. In his auto-biographical speech of 1654, be- 
fore quoted, he said " all the money of this nation 
would not have tempted men on such an account as 
they have been engaged in, if they had not had hopes 
of Liberty better than Episcopacy granted them, or 
than would have been afforded by a Scott Presby- 
tery, — or an English, either, if it had made such 
steps, and been as sharp and rigid as it threatened 
when first set up. This, I say, is Fundamental. It 
ought to be so. It is for us and the generations to 
come. And if there be any absoluteness in the Im- 
poser, without fitting allowance and exceptions from 
the rules, we shall huve the people driven into the 

* Lived 1594—1643, 



157 

Wilderness. As they were, when those poor and af- 
flicted people, who forsook their estates and inherit- 
ances liere, where they lived plentifully and comforta- 
bly, were necessitated, for enjoyment of their Liberty, 
to go into a waste howling wilderness in New En- 
gland; where they have, for Liberty's sake, stript 
themselves of all their Comfort ; embracing rather 
loss of friends and want than to be so ensnared and 
in bondage." 

Presbyterianism designed bloody intolerance, but 
its strength was palsied by the iron will of Crom- 
well. It was the vigilant, restless foe of the Com- 
monwealth, and to it Royalty was mainly indebted 
for its restoration. Its spirit (not its power) lived 
in the famous Acts of Uniformity of 1662, fitly born 
on the black anniversary of St. Bartholomew's day. 
Cromwell was an Independent, — Independency 
planted JVew England^ and here he ever found 
most cordial support and sympathy. He watched 
lis settlement, its progress, and would fain have 
joined in its fortunes, but God willed otherwise. 

Hampden was "constantly in communion with 
his friend and cousin, Oliver Cromwell," when the 
test question, the famous " Remonstrance," was 
passed by a small majority, 22d November, 1640, 
after the longest and stormiest debate ever yet known 
in Parliament. Hampden immediately moved to 
have \i printed, a publicity of state affairs till then 
inconceivable to the boldest man. It was on this 
occasion-, after three o'clock in the morning, coming 
14 



158 
down stairs, as the members were hurrying out of 
the House, that Lord Falkland asked Cromwell 
whether there had been a debate. To which he 
answered, he would take his word another time ; 
and whispered him in the ear, with some assevera- 
tion, " that if the remonstrance had been rejected^ 
he would have sold all he had the next mornings 
and never would have seen England more ; and, 
he knew there were many other honest men of the 
same resolution.'" "So near," adds Clarendon, 
*' was the poor kingdom at that time to its deliver- 
ance." Yes, and God forbade ! as he had done 
once before, in May, 1638, when the hearts of 
Charles and his evil genius. Laud, were " hardened, 
neither would they let them go out of his land," 
like Pharoah of old. 

At this moment Cromwell was merely Hampden's 
lieutenant, and this declaration that he knew " many 
other honest men of the same resolution," was 
doubtless the passionate disclosure of a scheme long 
familiar to their minds, and the execution of which 
they had thrown on the triumph or overthrow of 
this great struggle in Parliament. It improbable that 
they anticipated the terrific commotions which so fast 
thickened upon them. It is notable that their 
thoughts of emigration were not wholly abandoned 
till after Hampden's * death, in 1643. 



* Perhaps ITaifipden had actually visited New Eng- 
land ill 1622-3. See curious note to New York edition 
of Forst'ji 's Statesine:i, &.c. p. 246. 



159 



Of this school in politics and religion were the 
Founders of New England : men of truth, of strong 
minds, of dauntless spirit and inflexible temper ; 
of such were those whose names are preserved 
in the Apostle Eliot's 

Hcforb of i\)c i^atljcrs of Iloxbnrg. 

The arrangement of the names in the J^fss., ind- 
icates a design to have given concise notices of 
each — for instance, half of the page is left blank 
under Gov. Dudley's name, and so with many- 
others. A few notes will be appended, but most of 
the names may be found in the local histories, now so 
rapidly increasing, and to them, with Hutchinson, 
Winthrop, the Probate offices and other places of 
deposite of original authorities, the inquirer will 
properly refer. Thus it begins : 

** A recorde of such as adjoyned themselves unto the 

fellowship of this Church of Christ at 

Roxborough : as also of such children 

as they had when they joyned,& of 

such as were borne vnto them 

vnder the holy Covenant of 

this Church, who are 

most prperly the 

Seede of this 

Church. 



160 

*' 3Ir. William Pinchon came in the first com- 
pany in 1630 ; — he was one of the first foundation of 
the Church at Roxborough — was chosen an Assistant 
yearely so long as he lived amoung us: his wife dyed 
soone after he landed at N. Eng : he brought 4 chil- 
dren to N. E. : Ano, Mary, John, Margret. After 
some years he married Mris. Frances Samford, a 
grave matron of the Church at Dorchester. When 
so many removed from these parts to Plant Conecti- 
cot river, he also wth othr company went thithr 
and planted at a place called Agawam, and was re- 
commended to the Church at Windsor on Conecti- 
cottjuntill such time as it should please God to prvide 
yt they might enter into Church estate among 
themselves : his daughter Ann, was married to Mr. 
Smith Sonne to Mi*s. Samford by a former husband* 
he was a godly, wise young man, and removed to 
Agawam with his parents ; his daughter Mary was 
loaarried to Mr. Hollioke, the sonne of Mr. Hollioke, 
of Linn, Mr. Pinchon's ancient friend. 

Afterwards he wrote a Dialogue concerning Justi- 
fication, wch was Printed anno 1650, stiled The 
meritorious Price, a book full of error and weaknes 
& some heresies, wch the Generall Court of ye 
Massachusetts condemned to be burnt, and appointed 
Mr. John Norton the Teacher at Ipswich, to refute 
ye errors contained therein." 

Mr. Thomas Welde, — [was not the author of 
*« A Short Story of the Rise," &c. of the ''Antino- 
VjLians ;" Gov. Winthrop is entitled to the credit of 



161 

that performance — for an account of Mr. Weld, see 
Mr. Alexander Young — Chronicles of Mass. 511. n.] 

William Dennison, — he brought 3 children 
to N. E. all sons ; Daniel, Edward and George ; 
Daniel married at Newtowne, and was joyned to the 
Church there ; he afterwards removed to the Church 
at Ipswich ; [married Patience, d. of Gov. Thomas 
Dudley; was Major General of the Colony, &c. — 
Savage's Winthrop, II, 260, n.] 

Thomas Lambe, — he came into this land in 
the yeare 1630 ; he brought his wife & 2 children, 
Thomas and John ; Samuel, his 3d son, was borne 
about the 6th month of the same yeare 1630, and 
baptized in the Church at Dorchester. Abel, his 4th 
son, was borne about the 5th month, 1633, in Rocks- 
bury, Decline, his first daughter, was borne in the 
2d month, 1637. Benjamin, his 6th child, was 
borne about the 8th month, 1639, of wch child his 
wife died and the child lived but few hours. He 
afterwards married Dorothy Harbitle, a godly maide, 
a sister of our church : Caleb, his first borne by her, 
and his 7th child, was borne about the middle of the 
2d month, 1641. 

" Sammuell Wakeman, — he came to N. E. 
m the 9th month, 1631. He buryed his only child 
at sea : he was one of the first foundation of the 
Church at Rocksbury. Elizabeth, his first borne 
here, was borne about , in the yeare." [Sav- 
age's Winthrop, ii, 33, n. 2, relates the manner of 
his death.] 

14* 



162 

William Parke, — he came to N. E. in the 
12th month, 1630, a single man, and was one of the 
first in the church at Roxbrough ; he afterwards 

married Martha Holgrave, the daughter of 

Holgrave of Salem, he married the — month. 

Thomas Rawlings, — he brought 5 children to 
this Land. Thomas, Mary, Joane, Nathaniell, John. 
He came with the first company: 1630. [Annals of 
Dorchester, p. 22.] 

" Robert Cole, — he came with the first com- 
pany, 1630." [Sav. Winth. Index.] 

John Johnson. [" 1645. 2. 6. — John Johnson, 
the Surveyor General of the ammunition, a very in- 
dustrious and faithful man in his place, having built 
a fair house in the midst of the town, [of Roxbury] 
with divers barns and other out houses : it fell on 
fire in the day time, (no one knowing by what oc- 
casion,) and there being seventeen barrels of the 
country's powder, and many arms, all was suddenly 
burnt and blown up, to the value of 400 or 500 
pounds, wherein a special providence of God appear- 
ed, for being from home, the people came together 
to help, and many were in the house, no man think- 
ing of the powder, till one of the company put them 
in mind of it, whereupon they all withdrew, and 
soon after the powder took fire and blew up all about 
it, and shook the houses in Boston and Cambridge, 
so as men thought it had been an earthquake, and 
carried great pieces of timber a great way off", and 
some rags and such light things beyond Boston meet- 



163 

ing house. There beuig then a stiff gale at South, it 

drove the fire from the other houses in the town, (for 
this was the most Northerly,) otherwise it had en- 
dangered the greatest part of the town. This loss of 
our powder was the more observable in two respects : 
1. because the Court had not taken that care they 
ought, to pay for it, having been owing for divers 
years ; 2. in that, at the Court before, they had re- 
fused to help our countrymen in Virginia, who had 
written to us some time for their defence against the 
Indians, and also to help our brethren of Plymouth 
in their want." Winthrop, ii. 211, and Mr. Sav- 
age's note and index.l 

Robert Gamlin", Senior. [This surname was 
early in New Hampshire.] 

Richard Lyman, — he came to N. E. in the 9th 
month, 1631. He brought children, — Phillis, Rich- 
ard, Sarah; John. He was an ancient Christian, but 
weake, yet after some time of tryal & quickening, 
he joyned to the church ; wn the great removal 
was made to Conecticot, he also went and under- 
went much affliction, for goeing toward winter, his 
cattle were lost in driving, and never were found 
againe ; and the winter being could and ill prvided, 
he was sick and melancholly, yet after, he had some 
revivings, through God's mercy, and dyed in the 
yeare 1640. [A reputable family in Northampton, 
Mass.] 

Jehu Bur. 

William Chase, — he came in the first compa- 



164 

ny, 1630. He brought one child, his sonne William. 
He was much afflicted by the long and tedious afflic- 
tion of his wife ; after his wife's recovery she bare 
him a daughter whm they named Mary, borne 
about the middle of the 3d month, 1637. He did af- 
ter yt remove intending to Situate, but after went 
wth a company who maide a new plantation at Yar- 
mouth. 

Richard Bugby. 

Gregorie Baxter.* 

Francis Smith. 

John Perrie, [and wife Damerris in Newbury 
in 1651.— Coffin, 313.] 

John Leavens, he arrived at N. E. in the 
year 1632 — his wife lay bedrid divers years — 
after she dyed, he married Rachel Write, a God- 
ly maide, a membr of or church : John, his first 
borne, was borne the last the second month. Anno 
1640. 

Mris. Margret Welde, the wife of Mr, 
Thomas Weld. 

Sarah Lyman, the wife of Richard Lyman. 

[* He came in 1630, and settled in Roxbury ; removed 
to Braintree about 1640, and died June 21, 1659 — was 
a farmer — his wife Margaret died Feb. 13, 1662. Child- 
ren : — 

Bethia m. Samuel Dearing — she d. May 11, 1651. 

Abigail m. Joseph Adams of Braintree, Nov. 29, 1650. 
He was a Maltster, and the ancester of John Adams, 
President of the United States. 

John b. Dec. 1, 1639, m. Hannah, daughter of Thomas 
White of Weymouth, June 24, 1659.] 



165 

Elizabeth Lambe, the wife of Thomas 
Lanibe. 

Mr. Richard Dummer.* 

William Talmage, [benefactor of the free 
school.] 

John Carman, he came to N. E. in the yeare 
1631, he brought no children — his first borne John was 
borne the 8lh of the 5th month, 1633 : his daughter 
Abigail was borne in the 5th month, 1635 — his third 
child Caleb was borne in the first of the first [or sixt] 
month, 1639. 

Elizabeth Wakeman, the wife of Samuel 
Wakeman. 

Bur, the wife of Jehu Bur. 

Mary Coggshall, the wife of John CoggshalL 

John Watson, [m. Alice, widow of Valentine 
Prentise.] 

Margret Dennison, the \vife of William 
Dennison. It pleased God to work upon her heart & 
change it in her ancient yeares, after she came to this 
Land ; and joyned to the church in the yeare 1632. 

Mary Cole, the wife of Robert Cole. God also 

[* He came from Bishopstoke, England, in 1632 to 
lloxbury, thence to Newbiuy in 1636 — m. Mrs. Frances 
Burr, his second wife — he d. Dec. 14, 1679, aged 88 — 
she died 19 Nov. 1682, aged 70. Children— Shubael, 
b. 17 Feb. 1636. Jeremiah, 14 Sept. 1645. Hannah, 
7 Nov. 1647. Richard, 13 Jan. 1650. William, 18 
Jan. 1659. Jeremy, d. 25 May, 1718, at Boston, aged 
72 — his son Jeremy, the distinguished New England 
scholar and statesman, died at Piaistow, England, 19 
May, nS9.— Coffin's Hist . of Newbury, 16, 33, 301, 392. 
Winthrop, H, 4. 3Ir. Savage's note.} 



166 

wrought upon her heart (as it was hoped after her 
comino: to N. E. but after her husband's excommuni- 
cation and fall, she did too much favor his ways, yet 

not so as to incur any just blame, she lived an 

life bv reason of his unsettledness and removinji from 
place to place. 

Thomas Woodforde, a man servant, he came 
to N. E. in the yeare 1632, and was joyned to the 
church about halfe a yeare after, he afterwards niar- 
yed Mary Blott and removed to Connecticut, and 
joyned to the church at Hartford. 

Margery Hammond, a maide servant, she 
came to N. E, in the yeare 1632 and aboute halfe a 
yeare after, was joyned to the church : and after 
some yeares she was married to John Ruggls, of this 
church : 

Mary Chase, the wife of William Chase. She 

had a paralytic humor from the beginning to 

the end of which infirmity she lay 4 yeares and a 
halfe and a good part of the time a sad spectacle of 
misery : But it pleased God to raise her againe and 
she bore children after it. 

John Coggeshall. 

[Governor of Rhode Island. Savage's Winthrop, 
I. 130, n. 1.] 

William Heath, he came to this Land in the 
yeare 1632, soone after joyned to the church. He 
brought 5 children, Mary, Isaak, Mary, Peleg, Han- 
nah. Mary Heath the wife of William Heath. 

Mary Heath, the wife of William Heath. 



167 

[The following extract relates, doubtless, to one of 
their descentlants in Boston. 

"Another Acquaintance was Mr. Heath; were 
I to write the Character of a Pious Merchant, I'd 
fis soon take Heath for the Exemplar, as any Man I 
know. There are two things remarkable in him, 
one is, that he never warrants any Ware for good, 
but what is so indeed ; and the otiier that he makes 
no advantages of his Chapman's Ignorance, where 
the Conscience of the Seller is all the skill of the 
Buyer ; he doth not then so much ask, as order 
what he must pay ; and in such cases he ought to 
be very Scrupulous. Bp. Latimer being told he was 
cozened in buying a Knife, no, replied Latimer, he 
cozen'd not me, but his own Conscience. This 
Person was my daily visitor, and brougjit me 
acquainted with one Gore, of A^'ew York, with 
whom I traded considerably." — Dunton''s Life and 
Errors, page 130.] 

William Curtis, he came to this land in the 
yeare 1G32, and soone after joyned the church, he 
brought 4 children wth him, Thomas, Mary, John, 
Philip, and his eldest sonn William, came the yeare 
before, he was a hopefull scholler, but God tooke him 
in the end of the yeare 1634. 

Sarah Curtis, the wife of William Curtis. 

Thomas Offitt. 

Offitt, the wife of Thomas Offitt. 

IsAAK Morrell. 

MoRRELL, the wife of Isaak Morrell. 



16S 

Danikll Brewer. 

Brewer, the wife of Daniell Brewer. 

Griffith Crafts. 

Crafts, the wife of Griffith Crafts, 

Mary Rawlings, the wife of Thomas Raw- 
lings. She lived a godly life, &i went through 
much weakness of body, and after five years when 
her husband had removed to Sittuate she dved, about 
the yeare 1639. 

Thomas Goldthwait. 

Mr. John Eliot ; he came to N. E. in the 9th 
month 1631, he left his intended wife In England, to 
come the next yeare, he adjoyned to the church at 
Boston, and there exercised in the absence of Mr. 
Wilson the Pastor of yt church, who was gone back 
to England for his wife and family, the next summer 
Mr. Wilson returned and by yt time the church at 
Boston was intended to call him to office, his friends 
wr come over and settled in Rocksbrough, to whom 
he was foreingaged, yt if he were not called to office 
before they came, he was to joyne with them, where- 
upon the church at Rocksbrough called him to be 
Teacher in the end of yt summer and soone after he 
was ordained to yt office in the church. 

Also his wife came along vvth the rest of his friends 
the same time and soone after, their comeing, they 
were married, viz. in the 8th month 1632. Hannah 
his first borne daughter was borne the 17 day of the 
7th month an. d. 1633. John his first borne sonne 
was borne in the 31 day of the 6th month an. d. 1636. 



169 

Joseph his 2d sonne was borne in the 20th day of the 
10th month an. d. 1638. 

Samuel his third sonne was born the 22d day of 
the 4th month An. d. 1641. 

Aaron his 4th sonne was borne the 19 of the 12th 
An. d. 1643. 

Benjamin his 3d sonne was borne the 29 of the 
llth 1646. [A detailed account of the apostle's 
family will be given hereafter.] 

Mrs. Ann Eliot, the wife of Mr. John Elioto 
[Her maiden name was Mumford, perhaps a corrup- 
tion of Mountfort,] 

Mr. George Alcocke he came wth the first 

company Ano 1630, he left his only son [ ] in 

England, his wife dyed soone after he came to this 

lande, when the people of Rocksbrough joyned to 

the church at Dorchester (vntil such time as God 

should give them oportunity to be a church among 

themselves) he was by the church chosen to be a 

Deacon .... to regard the brethren at Rocksbrough : 

And after he adjoyned himselfe to this church at 

Rocksbrough he was ordained a Deakon of this 

church : he made two voyages to England upon just 

calling thereunto wherein he had much experience of 

God's preservation and blessing. He brought over 

his son John Alcoeke, he also brought over a wife by 

whom he tiad his 2d son Samuel borne in the year : 

he lived in a good and godly sort and dyed in the 

end of the 10th month Ano. 1640, and left a good 

favor behind him : the Poor of the church much be- 

v/ailing his life, 

15 



170 

Valentine Prentise he came to this land in 
the year 1631 and joyned to the church in the yeare 
1632, he brought but one child to the land, his son 
John and buryed another at sea : he lived a godly 
life and went through much affliction by bodily in- 
firmity and died leaving a good savor of godlyness be- 
hind him-. [Probably of the JVazing brotherhood ; 
perhaps brother to Robert Prentice of Roxbury, who 
was " buried 3d, 12 mo. 1665," leaving an Estate of 
£174. 16. 5. settled by Capt. Thos. Prentice of New- 
ton. His son John was admitted to Roxbury 
church, 24. 7. 1665, by Esther he had chil- 
dren. 

John, b. Aug. 6, 1652— bapt. 7. 29. 1667. 

Joseph, b. Apr. 5. 1655. 

Jonathan, b. July 15. 1657— d. 1727 M 70. (Tomb 
stone. New London, Ct.) 

Esther, b. July 20. 1660 [*' Joseph, Jonathan, 
Peter, Steven, Esther, children to John Prentice 
baptd. 2. 19. 1668."— iloor. Church Rec.'\ 

Peter, b. July 31. 1663. 

Stephen, b. Nov. 26. 1666. 

Mercy, b. 1668. 

Hannah, b. June 1672 

Thomas, b. Nov. 4. 1675. ) rp • 
Elizabeth \ ^^^'^^^ 

By a 2d wife, late in life he had Ralph, b. about 
1687. 

John Prentice was a skilful Blacksmith and was 
offered special privileges to settle in New London 



171 

Ct. which he did in 1651 or 2 — 6 or 7 years after 
its settlement. In 1644 "John Prentice of New 
London Ct was fined £5. for notching a colt's tail, 
{Hinman's 1st Settlers of Ct.) and at a general 
assembly held at Hartford Ct. Oct. 1644 " this Court 
abate John Prentice half his fine of £5 and he is to 
pay ten shillings for his petitions." (TrumbuWs 
Col. Rec. of Ct.) Hartford was called Newtown 
until 1636. 

There may have been one son of John born be- 
fore he removed to New London. He probably 
visited Roxbury to have his children baptized as 
New London, tho' not destitute of a minister, had 
not a regularly ordained clergyman qualified to ad- 
minister the ordmances until 1770 ; the first of 
John's children, baptized in New London, was Han- 
nah in 1672. Some of the families in Mass. and 
Count, have altered the name from Prentice to 
Prentiss. The descendants of John the " Smith " 
are numerous in Connt. Samuel Prentice who emi- 
grated from Newton, Mass. and died in Stonington 
in 1727, has also many descendants.- — Mr. C, J. 
F. Binney^s Mss."] 

Alice Prebttise the wife of Valentine Prentise 
after her husband's death she was married to John 
Watson of this church. 

Abraham Pratt. 

JoHANNAH Pratt the wife of Abraham Pratt. 

Mris Francis Pinchon the wife of Mr. WiU 
liam Pinchon : she was a widow, a matron of the 



172 

church at Dorchester wr Mr Pinchon married her, 
she came with the first company Ano. 1630. 

Mris. Mary Dummer the wife of Mr. Richard 
Dummer, she was a Godly woman but by the seduc- 
tion of some of her acquaintances she was led away 
into the new opinions in Mris. Hutchinson's time, 
and her husband removing to Newbury, she there 
openly declared herselfe, and did also (together with 
other's endeavors) seduce her husband and persuad- 
ed him to returne to Boston, where she being yonng 
with child and ill, she died in a most uncomfortable 
manner. But we believe God took her away in 
mercy from worse evil which she was falling int& 
and we doubt not she is gone to heaven. 

Talmage the wife of William Talmage, she 
was a grave matron and godly woman and after her 
husband was removed to Linne a few years she died 
and left a gracious savor behind her. 

Ann Shelly a maide servant she came to thia 
land in the year 1632 and was married to .... . 
Foxall a godly hrother of the church of Scituate. 

Rebeckah Short a maide servant, she came 
in the yeare 1632, and was married to Pal- 
mer a godly man of Charleatown church. 

Judith Bugby the wife of Richard Bugbie. 

Florance Carman the wife John Carman. 

Mary Blott a maide servant she came in the 
yeare 1632 and was after married to T homas Wood- 
ford of this church, who afterwards removed to 
Conecticott to Hartford church where she lived ic 
Christian State, 



173 

William Hills a man servant he came over 
in the yeare 1632 — he married Phillice Lyman the 
daughter of Richard Liman, he removed to Hart- 
ford on Conecticott, where he lived several years, 

wth out giving such good satisfaction to the 

of the saints. 

Mary Gamlin a maid servant, daughter of 
Rob : Gamlin the Eldr. she came with her father 
in the yeare 1632, she was a very gracious maiden : 
she died in Mr. Pinchon's family of the small pox in 
the yeare 1633. 

Robert Gamlin Junior, he arrived at N. E. 
the 20th of the 3d month, he brought only one child 
who was the sonne of his wife by a former husband, 
his name is John Mayo, he was but a child. 

Elizabeth his first borne was borne about the 24th 
of the 4th month : ano. dni : 1634. 

Joseph borne the 16th of the 10th month ano. d. 
1636. 

Benjamin borne the 20th of the 6th month 1639. 

Elizabeth Gamlin the wife of Robert Gam- 
lin Junior. 

Phillis Lyman the daughter of Richard Ly- 
man — she came to the land with her father ano. 
1631, God wrought upon her heart in this land — • 
she grew deaft : which disease increasing was a 
great affliction to her — she was married to William 
Hills and lived with him at Hartford on Conecticot. 

John Moody, he came to the Land in the yeare 
1633 : he had no children — he had 2 men servants 
15* 



174 

yt were nngodly especially one of them who in 
his passione would wish himselfe in hell : and use 
desperte words, yet had a good measure of knowl- 
edge : these 2 servants would goe to the oister banke 
in a boate and did against the counsel of theire Gover- 
nor, where they lay all night and in the morning early 
when the tide was out, they gathering oysters did 
unskilfully leave their boate afloate in the verge oT 
the channel yt they could not come neare it which 
made them cryout and hollow but being very early 
and remote were not heard till the water had risen 
very high upon them to the arme holes, as it's thought 
and then a man from Rocksbrough meeting house 
heard them cry and call and he cried and ran when all 
pursued and seeing thare boate swam to it and hasted 
to them, but they were both so drowned before any 
help could possibly come — a dreadful example of 
God's disapprobation against obstinate servants. 

Sarah Moody the wife of John Moody — 

John Walker — 

Elizabeth Hinds, a maidservant — she came 
in the yeare 1633. she had some weaknesses, but 
upon the church's admonition she was afterwards 

married to Alexander of Boston whither she 

was dismissed. 

Elizabeth Ballard a maide servant — she 
came in the year 1633, and was soone after joyned. 
to the church — she was afterwards married to Robert 
Sever of this church, where she led a godly conver- 
sation. 



175 

John Porter. 

Margaret Porter the wife of John Porter, 

William Cornewell. 

JoANE Cornewell, the wife of William 
Cornewell. 

Samuel Basse. 

Ann Basse the wife of Samuel Basse. 

Nicholas Parker, he came to N. E. in the 
year 1633, about the 7 month : he brought two chil- 
dren Mary and Nicolas : Johannah his third child 

was borne the first of the 4th month 1635 he 

removed from us to the church of Boston. 

Ann Parker the wife of Nicolas Parker. 

Phillip Sherman, he came into the Land in 
the yeare 1633, a single man and after married 
Sarah Odding, the daughter of the wife of John Por- 
ter, by a former husband — this man was of a mealan- 
choly temper, he lived honestly and comfortably 
among us severall years, upon a just calling went for 
England and returned againe with a blessing : But 
after his father in Law John Porter was so carried 
away with these opinions of families and schisme, 
he followed them and removed with them to the Is- 
land [Rhode Island ] — he behaved 

himself sinfully in those matters (as may appeare in 
the story) and was cast out of the church. 

Margaret Huntington widdow, she came 
in the yeare 1633 — her husbaud dyed by the way of 

the small pox, she bronght children with 

her. 



176 

Thomas Pigge. 

Mary Pigge the wife of Thomas Pigge. 

Samuel finch. 

Martha Parke the wife of William Parke. 

John Tatman. 

Thomas Willson he arrived in N. E. in the 
4 month ano 1633, he brought 3 children, Humfry, 
Samuel, Joshua — 

Deborah borne in the 6 month 1634. 

Lidea borne in the 9 month 1636. 

He had his house and all substances consumed 
wth fire to his great impoverishing being from home. 

He was a very weake man, yet was he out of af- 
fection to the persons of some led aside into error, 
schisme and very proud and contemptuous carriage 
for which he was cust out of the church and he went 
away with Mr. Wheelwright. But the Lord awak- 
ened his heart so yt after years he returned and re- 
gretted and was reconciled to the church and recom- 
mended to the church of Christ at 

Margery Johnson the wife of John Johnson. 

Ann Wilson the wife of Thomas Wilson. 

Jasper Rawlings. 

Joshua Hues, he came into the Land a single 
man ; about the 7 month of the year 1633, and joyn- 
ed to the church about half a yeare after and his wife 

being the daughter of Gouldstone came the 

next summer and abode at Watertown, where she 
was adjoined to the church ; and in the 8th month 
1634 he married her ; and she was then recommend- 



177 

ed to our church — his first born son Joshua Hewes 
was borne the 19 day of the 8th month 1639, but dy- 
ed the 19 day of 10th month 1639, it died of convul- 
sive fitts. 

Isaac Johnson. 

Ralph Hinningway a man servant. 

Sarah Odding, she was daughter in law to 
John Porter and came with her parents and was af- 
ter married to Phillip Sherman of this church. 

Thonas Hills a man servant, he came in the 
year 1633, he lived among us in good esteeme and 
Godly and dyed about the 11 or 12 month 1634 and 
left a good savor behind him — he was a very faithfull 
and prudent servant and a good christian — he dyed 
in Mr. Eliot's family. 

Thomas Hale a single man, he lived but a 
short time wth us, bnt he removed to Hartford on 
Connecticot where God blessed him wth a good 
measure of increase of grace — he afterwards returned 
and maryed Jane Lord one of or membrs aboute the 
12th month 1639 and the next Spring returned to 
Conecticot. 
-^ Edward Riggs. 

Walker the wife of John Walker. 

Hues a maid servant. 

John Stow — he arrived at N. E. the 7th of the 
3d month an'o 1634 — he brought his wife and 6 chil- 
dren, Thomas, Elizabeth, John, Nathaniel, Samuel> 
Thankful. 

Elizabeth Stow the wife of John Stow — she 



-J 



178 

was a very godly matron, a blessing not only to her 
fannily, but to all the church — when she had lead a 
christian conversation a few years among us, she dy- 
ed and left a good savor behind her. 

John Cumpton. 

Abraham Newell, he came to N. E. in the 
yeare 1634, he brought 6 children, Ruth, Grace, 
John, Isaac, the youngest was born at .... . they 
came, and was baptized here wheu his father joyned 
to the church by virtue of his parents covenant. 

Freeborne. 

Sarah Burrell the wife of Burrel. 

Robert Potter* 

IsABELL Potter the wife of Robert Potter. 

Eizabth Haward a maide servant. 

Richard Pepper. 

Mary Pepper the wife^ of Richard Pepper. 

William Perkins. 

Robert Sever. 

Disborough the wife of Walter Disborough. 

Christopher Peake a single man. 

Edward Paison a man seivant, 

Nicholas Bakeb. 

Joseph Welde. 

Elisabeth Wise a widdow. 

Thomas Bell. 

Mr. Tho. Bell and his wife had letters of Dis- 
mission granted and sent to England a. d. 1654, 7 m. 
[cherish his name and memory as a noble benefac- 
tor of the town.] 



179 

William Webb. 

Adam Mott. 

Sarah Mott the wife of Adam Mott. 

Richard Carder. 

Mris Anna Vassaile the wife of Mv, William 
Vassaile, her husband brought 5 children to this 
Land — Judith, Francis, John, Margret, Mary — 

Laurence Whiltamore — 

John Ruggles, became to N. E. in the yeare 
1635, and soone after his comeing joyned to the 
church, he was a lively christian knowne to many \ 
of the church in old England, u-here many of the 
church injoyed society together he brought his first 
borne John Ruggles with him to N. E, and his second 
son was still borne in the 11th month 1636 of which 
his wife dyed. 

Barbara Ruggles the wife of John Ruggles, 
she was a Godly Christian woman and joyned to the 
church with her husband — the power of the grace of 
Christ did much shine in her life and death, she was 
much afflicted in which sickness she mani- 
fested much patience and faith ; she dyed in child 
bed the 11th month 1636 and left a godly savor be- 
hind her. 

IsAACK Heath [of whom an account has already 
been given.] 

John Atwood. 

Phillip Eliot — he dyed about the 22d of the 
8th month : 57 : he was a man of peace and very 
faithful! — he was many years in the office of a Dea- 



180 

kon vvh he discharged faithfully — in his latter years 
he was very lively, useful and active for God, in his 
cause, the Lord gave hini so much acceptance in the 
hearts of the people yt he dyed under many of the of- 
fices of trust yt are usually put upon irieu of his rank, 
for besides his office as a Deakon he was a Deputy 
to the Gen : Court, he was a Commissioner for the 
judgmt of the Towne, — he was one of the 5 men to 
order the prudential affairs of the towne ; and he 
was chosen to be Feofee of the publike schools in 
Roxbury." 
Elizabeth Bowis. 

Martha Astwood the wife of John Astwood. 
Jasper Gun 
Thomas Bircharde. 

John Cheny became into the Land in the yeare 
1635 he brought 4 children, Mary, Martha, John, 
Daniel. Sarah his 5th child was borne in the last 
month of the same yeare 1635, cal'd february, he 
removed from our church to Newbury the end of the 
next summer 1636. 

Martha Cheny the wife of John Cheny — 
Mary Norrice a maide — she came into the 

land she was daughter to Mr. Edward Norrice 

who came into the land and was called and 

ordained to be Teacher to the church at Salem, 
where he served the Lord Christ. 

Henry Bull a man servant, he came to the 

Land he lived honestly for a good season, but 

on the suddaine (being weake and affectionate) h<i 



181 

was taken and transported with the opinions offami- 
lism and running in that schisme he fell into many 
and grosse sins of lying, &c, (as may be sene in the 
story) for which he was excommunicated after wch 
he removed to the Island. [Rhode Island.] 

Mr. Thomas Jenner. 

Bell, the wife of Thomas Bell. 

James How. 

How, the wife of James How. 

BiRCHARD, the wife of Thomas Birchard. 

John Graves. He arived in the 3d month 1633 
— he brought 5 children : John, Samuel, Jonathan, 
Sarah, Mary. His wife quickly died, and he married 

Judith , a maide servant, by whom his first 

child Hannah was borne about the end of the 7th 
month 1636. 

Mr. John Gore. 

Mary Swain e, a maide servant. Her father 
lived at Watertovv-ne and did remove with them to 
Conecticott, whither we recommended her, and she 
after did marrie to one at Newhaven, and she was 
dismissed to yt church. 

Jane Lorde, a maide servant. She came over 
in the yeare. She lived a godly life among us, and 
jn the yeare 1640 she was married to Thomas Hale-, 
one of the church who removed to Hartford on Con- 
ecticott, where they lived well approved of the 
saints, 

Giles Paison, a single man — he married o'^- 
lister Elizabeth Dowell [?]. 
96 



182 

Edward Porter, he came in the yeare 1636 ; 
he brought two children with him, John, about 3 
years old & William about a yeare ould ; his 3d 
child Elizabeth was born in o'r Chuich in the 10th 
month of the yeare 1637 — his 4th child Hannah was 
borne in the 9th month of yeare 1639. 

Elizabeth Eliot the wife of Philip Eliot. 

Newell the wife of Abraham Newell. 

Elizabeth Dowell a maide servant — she was 
married to our brother Giles Paison. 

Phillis Pepper a maide servant. 

Robert Williams. 

Judith Weld the second wife of Mr. Thomas 
Weld. 

Samuel Hagbourne. 

Elizabeth Williams the wife of Robert Wil- 
liams. 

Katheren Hagbourne the wife of Samuel 
Hagbourne. 

Abraham How. 

How the wife of x\braham How. 

Arthur Geary. 

Geary, the wife of Arthur Geary. 

Thomas Ruggles he came to N. E. in the 
yeare 1637, he was elder brother to John Ruggles, 
children of a Godly fathr; he joyned to the church 
soone after his coming being as well knoion as his 
brothr — his first borne son dyed in England — his 
second son John was brought over a servant by Phil- 
lip Eliot : & he brought two other children with him: 



183 

Sarah & Samuel. He had a great sickness the yeare 
after his coming, but the Lord recovered him in 
mercy. 

Mary the wife of Thomas Ruggles — she joyn- 
ed to the church with her husband & approved her 
selfe a godly Christian by a holy & blamelesse con- 
versation being converted not long before their com- 
ing from England. 

Edward Bridges. 

Johnson the wife of Isaak Johnson. 

Christian Spisor a maide servant. 

Mris Rhoda Gore the wife of Mr. John Goare. 

Rachel Write, a maide servant — she was 
married to our brother John Leavins. 

Johanna Boyse a maide. 

Thomas Mihill. 

MiHiLL the wife of Mihill. 

BoYSE the wife of Boyse. 

Mathew Boyse. 

Green widdow. 

Porter the wife of Edward Porter. 

Mr John Miller. 

[The obscurity respecting Miller is somewhat 
cleared up by an entry in the church records, viz. 
1647. month 6, day 8, Susan Miller, daughter to 
Mr. John Miller, once an Eldr of o^r church, after- 
wards at Rowley he pr'ched, arid then was called to 
Yarmonth, baptized. He received the degree of B. 
A. in 1627 at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge 
--^was an Elder of Roxbury church, town clerk of 



184 

Rowley 1639-1641; Oct. 25, 1641 declined an invi- 
tation to preach at Woburn ; Sept. 1642, refused to 
go on a missionary tour to Virginia " because of hi» 
bodily weakness;" Dec. 1642, was one of the gran- 
tees of Newbury, where he may have resided ; min- 
ister in Yarmouth, Mass. as early as May 1647 till 
about March 18, 1663, then preached at Groton,. 
where he died June 12 or 14. 1663 — He was suc- 
ceeded at Yarmouth by the Rev. Thomas Thornton^ 
about 1663 to 1694, who died at Boston in 1700-1, 
aged nearly 93. Mr. Thornton in his old age had the 
Rev. John Cotton as his colleague. Mr. Miller's 
son John married Margaret, dau. of Gov. Josiah 
Winslow, Dec. 24, 1659, and died June 1711, leav- 
ing three sons and eight daughters. — ^^ Yarmouth 
Register,''^ edited by Amos Otis, Esq.; Johnson^s 
Wonder- Working Providence ; Hubbard'' s Hist.^ 
J\r. E. Hist. Gen. Reg. ; Mass, Hist. Coll. ; 
Coffin^s JVewbury ;• Ancient Rec. of Towns and 
Churches, Sfc."] 

Mrs. LiDEA Miller, the wife of Mr. John Mil- 
ler. 

George Holmes. 

William Chandler, he came to N. E. aboute 
the yeare 1637, he brought 4 small children : Thom- 
as, Hannah, John, William ; his 5th child Sarah 
was borne here, he lived a very religious and godly 
life among us, and fell into a consumption to which 
he had been long inclined, he lay neare a yeare 
sick, in all which time his faiths patience^ & Godly-* 



185 

ness & contentation so shined that Christ was much 
glorified in him — he was a man of weake parts, but 
excellent faith and holiness, he was a very thankful 
man and much magnifi-fed God's goodness. He was 
poor, but God prepared the hearts of his people to 
him that he never wanted that which was (at least 
in his esteem) very plentifull and comfortable to him 

— he died about the in the yeare 1641 » 

and left a sweet memory and savor behind him. 

Hannah Chandler the wife of William 
Chandler. 

Webb, the wife of William Webb, she followed 
baking, and through her covetous mind she made 
light waight after many admonitions, & after sundry 
rebukes of o court, & officers in the market, & after 
her speciall promise to the contrary, yet was a [gain] 
scandalously discovered in open market ; as also for 
a habit of lying and shifting, after much admonition, 
& also for a gross ly in publick, flatly denying that 
after she waighed her dough, she never nimed off 
bits of each loaf, wch yet was by 4 wittnesses testi- 
fyed, & after appeared to be a common if not a con- 
stant practice, for all wch gross sinns she was ex- 
communicated the 23d day of the 8th month ano. 
1642, her ways having long been a grief of heart to 
her Godly neighbors. But afterwards she was reuni- 
ted to the church, and lived christianly and dyed 
comfortably. 

Silence Robbinson the wife of Thomas Rob- 
biaaon. 

16* 



186 

Mris Sheafe a widdow. 

Mr, Blackburne. 

Mris Blackburne the wife of Mr Blackburne, 

Samuel Chapin. 

Griggs. 

Richard Peacocke was dismissed to ye church 
at Boston 9th. 5th. 1665. 

Jane Peacocke the wife of Richard Peacocke. 

John Roberts he came to New England m the 
yeare 1636 — he brought with him his aged mother, 
wife, and seven children : Thomas and Edward, sons, 
Elisabeth, Margery, Jones, Alice, Lidea, Ruth, De- 
borah, daughters — he was one of the first fruits of 
Wales that came to JV. E. called to Christ by the 
ministry of that Reverend & worthy instrument Mr 
Weath. 

James Astwood he arrived at N. E. in the yeare 
1638, the 3d month. He brought a young childe 
which was buryed here. James his first borne here, 
was born about the 6th day of the 10th month 1638. 
John was borne about the 15 of the 7th month 1640, 
and dyed in the end of the 12 month the same yeare. 
John his 3d son was born about the beginning of the 
12th month 1641. He was dismissed to the new 
church at Boston. 

Sarah Astwood the w-ife of James Astwood. 

George Kilborne a man servant. 

Dorothy Harbeetle, a maide servant. 

Ann Wallis, a maide servant. 

Mris Martha Parks, the wife of , 



18T 

Mf . Thomas Dudley [was born at the town of 
JVorihampton, in the year 1576, the only son of cap- 
tain Roger Dudley, who being slain in the wars, 
left this our Thomas, with his only sister, for the 
Father of the orphans to take them vp. In the fam- 
ily of the Earl of ^"br/^amj9fo?i he had opportunity 
perfectly to learn the points of good behaviour ; and 
here having fitted himself to do many other benefits 
unto the world, he next became a clerk unto Judge 
JVichols, who being his kinsman by the mother'^s 
side, therefore took the more special notice of him. 
From his relation to this judge, he had and used an 
advantage to attain such a skill in the law, as was of 
great advantage to him in the future changes of his 
life ; and the judge would have preferred him unto 
the higher imployments, whereto his prompt wit not 
a little recommended him, if he had not been by 
death prevented. But before he could appear to do 
much at the pen, for which he was very well accom- 
plished, he was called upon to do something at the 
sword ; for being a young gentleman well known for 
his ingenuity, courage and conduct, when there were 
soldiers to be raised by order from Queen Elizabeth 
for the French service, in the time of King Henry 
the Fourth, the young sparks about Northampton 
were none of them willing to enter into the service, 
until a commission was given unto our young Dud- 
ley to be their captain ; and then presently there 
were fourscore that listed under him. At the head 
of these he went over into the Low Countries, which 



188 

was then an academy of arms as well as arts ; and 
thus he came to furnish himself with endowments for 
the field as well as for the bench. The post assign- 
ed unto him with his company, was after at the siege 
o^ Amiens, before which the King himself was now 
encamped; but the providence of God so ordered it, 
that when parties were drawn forth in order to battel, 
a treaty of peace was vigorously set on foot, which 
diverted the battel that was expected. Captain Dud- 
ley hereupon returned into England, and settling 
himself about Northampton, he married a gentlewo- 
man whose extraction and estate were considerable ; 
and the situation of his habitation after this helped 
him to enjoy the ministry of Mr. Dod, Mr. Cleaver, 
Mr. Winston^ and Mr. Hildersham, all of them ex- 
cellent and renowned men; which puritan miiiistry 
so seasoned his heart with a sense of religion, that he 
was a devout and serious Christian, and a follower 
of the ministers that most effectually preached real 
Christianity all the rest of his days. The spirit of 
real Christianity in him now also disposed him unto 
sober nonconformity ; and from this time, although 
none more hated the fanaticisms and enthusiasms 
of wWdopinionists, he became a. j udicious Dissenter 
from the unscriptual ceremonies retained in the 
Church of England. It was not long after this that 
the Lord Say, the Lord Compton, and other persons 
of quality, made such obvervations of him, as to 
commend him unto the service of the Earl of Lincoln, 
who was then a young man, and newly come into 



189 

the possession of his Earldom, and of what belonged 
thereunto. The grandfather of this noble person had 
left his heirs under vast entanglements, out of which 
his father was never able to extricate himself ; so 
that the difficulties and incumbrances were now de- 
volved upon this TheophiluSy which caused him to 
apply himself unto this our Dudley for his assist- 
ances, who proved so able and careful and faithful a 
steward unto him, that within a little while the debts 
of near twenty thousand pounds, whereinto the young 
Earl found himself desperately ingulphed, were hap- 
pily waded through ; and by his means also a match 
was procured between the young Earl and the daugh- 
ter of the Lord Say, who proved a most virtuous 
lady and a great blessing to the whole family. But 
the Earl finding Mr. Dudley to be a person of more 
than ordinary discretion, he would rarely, if ever, do 
any matter of any moment without his advice ; but 
some into whose hands there fell some of his manu- 
scripts after his leaving of the Earl's family, found a 
passage to this purpose. The Estate of the Earl of 
Lincoln, I found so and so much in debt, which I 
have discharged, and have raised the rents unto so 
many hundreds per annum; God will, I trust, bless 
me and mine in such a manner. I can, as some- 
times Nehemiah did, appeal unto God, who knows 
the hearts of all men, that I have with integrity 
discharged the duty of rny place before him. 

I had prepared and intended a more particular 
aqcount of this gentleman; but not having any oppor^ 



190 

tunity to commit it unto the perusal of any descend- 
ed from him, (unto whom I am told it will be unac- 
ceptable for me to publish any thing of this kind, by 
them not perused) I have laid it aside, and summed 
all up in this more general account. 

It was about nine or ten years, that Mr. Dudley 
continued a steward unto the Earl of Lincoln ; but 
then growing desirous of a more private life, he re- 
tired into Boston., were the acquaintance and minis- 
try of Mr. Cotton became no little satisfaction unto 
him. Nevertheless the Earl of Lincoln found that 
he could do no more without Mr. Dudley, than Pha- 
xaoh without his Joseph, and prevailed with him to 
resume his former employment, until the storm of 
persecution upon the nonconformists caused many 
men of great worth to transport themselves into JVeoi 
England. Mr. Dudley was not the least of the 
worthy men that bore a part in this transportation, 
in hopes that in an American wilderness they might 
peaceably attend and enjoy the pure worship of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. When the first undertakers for 
that plantation came to know him, they soon saw 
that in him, that caused them to chuse him their dep- 
uty governour, in which capacity he arrived unto 
these coasts in the year 1630, and had no small share 
in the distresses of that young plantation, whereof an 
account by him written to the Countess o^ Lincoln, 
has been since published unto the world. Here his 
wisdom in managing the most weighty and thorny 
affairs was often signalized : his justice was a per* 



191 

petual terror to evil doers : his courage procared his 
being the first major-general of the colony, when 
they began to put themselves into a military figure. 
His orthodox piety had no little influence unto the 
deliverance of the country from the contagion of the 
famalistical errors, which had like to have over- 
turned all. He dwelt first at Cambridge ; but upon 
Mr. Hooker'' s removal to Hartford, he removed to 
Ipsioich ; nevertheless, upon the importunity and 
necessity of the government for his coming to dwell 
nearer the center of the whole, he fixed his habita- 
tion at Roxbury, two miles out of Boston, where he 
was always at hand upon the public exigencies. 
Here he died July 31, 1653, in the seventy-seventh 
year of his age; and there were found after his death 
in his pocket, these lines of his own composing, 
which may serve to make up what may be wanting 
in the character already given him. 

Dim eyes, deaf ears, cold stomach, shew 
My dissolution is in view. 
Eleven times seven near liv'd have I, 
And now God calls, 1 willing die. 
My shuttle's shot, my race is run, 
My sun is set, my day is done. 
My span is measm'd, tale is told. 
My flower is faded and grown old. 
My dream is vanish 'd, shadow's fled. 
My soul with Christ, my body dead . 
Farewel dear wife, children and friende, 
Hate heresie, make blessed ends. 



192 

Bear poverty, live with good men; 

So shall we live with joy agen. 

Let men of God in courts and churches watch 

O'er such as do a toleration hatch, 

Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice, 

To poison all with heresie and vice. 

If men be left, and otherwise combine. 

My Epitaph's, I dy'd no libertine. 

But when I mention the poetry of this gentleman 
as one of his accomplishments, 1 must not leave un- 
?nentioned the fame with whidi tlie j^ocwjs of one de- 
scended from him have been celebrated m both 
Englands. If the rare learning of a daugJiter was 
not the least of those bright things that adorned no 
less a Judge of England than Sir Thomas More ,■ 
it must now be said, that a Judge o^ JVew England, 
namely, Thomas Dudley, Esq., had a daughter 
(besides other children) to be a crown unto him. 
Reader, America justly admires the learned women 
of the other hemisphere. She now prays, that into 
such catalogue of authoresses, as Beverovicius, Hot- 
linger, and Voeiius, have given unto the world, 
theje may be a room now given unto Madam Ann 
Bradstreet, the daughter of our governour Dud- 
ley, and the consort of our governour Bradstreet, 
whose poems, divers times printed, have afforded a 
grateful entertainment unto the ingenius, and a mon- 
•ument for her memory beyond the stateliest marbles. 
It was upon these poems that an ingenious person 
?jestowed this epigram .• 



193 

Now I believe tradition, which doth call 
The Muses, Virtues, Graces, females all. 
Only they are not nine, eleven, or three ; 
Our auth'ress proves them but an unity. 
Mankind, take up some blushes on the score; 
Monopolize perfection hence no more. 
In jour own arts confess yourselves outdone ; 
The moon hath totally eclips'd the sun : 
Not with her sable mantle muffling him. 
But her bright silver makes his gold look dim : 
Just as his beams force our pale lamps to wink, 
And earthlj' fires within their ashes shrink. 

Mather's Magnalia, pp. 120-3. 

Will of Thomas Dudley, 

O-T Roxbury in New England, made in perfect 
health, the 26th of Aprill, 1652 ; for my sole I com- 
mend it unto the hande of my God in vvhome I 
haue belieued, whome I haue loued, which hee hath 
promised to receiue in lesus Christ my redeemer & 
sauiour, with whome I desire euer to bee, leauing 
this testimony behind race for the Vse & example of 
my posteritie, & any other vpon whome it may 
worke, that I haue hated & doe hate euery falce 
way in religion, not onely the old Idolitry & super- 
stition of Popery which is wearing away, but much 
more (as being much worse) the more herisies blas- 
phamies & error of late sprunge vpp in our natiue 
ijountry of England & secretly receieied & fostered. 
My body I desire to bee buried neare my first wife, 
17 



194 

if my present wife be liuing at my death. My tem- 
poral! estate I intend to despose of it as iustly and 
equally as I can contriue it, betweene the posteritie 
of my childn by my first wife, and my children by 
my last wife, accounting Thomas Dudley ^ John 
Dudley my grandchildren (whome I haue brought 
upp) in some soil as my immediate children. First 
what I couenanted at my marriage with my prsent 
wife, to giue her, & such childne as I should haue 
by her, be made good vnto them, with this condition 
& explanacon ; that all my lands in Roxbury, being 
duely vallued by my executor, wth all my goods, 
debts, plate, household stufFe & bookes* — My sonne 
Joseph Dudley to haue a double portion, & Paule 
Dudley & Deborah Dudley, each a single porcon ; 
— land to goe to Joseph according to my foremen- 
coned couenant, & ye Goods & debts to Paule & 
Deborah. If the land amount to more then a dou- 
ble porcon, then to take ovt of ye same from Joseph, 
and giue it to Paule & Deborah. My present wife 
& my three children to haue all my lands, goods & 
debts, (except what I giue to others) I giue to the 
children of my sonne Samuell Dudley, the 6th part 
of my mill at Watertowne, & of the house & ffteene 
acres of land in Watertown, together with a 6th part 
ofyedebtwch Thos : Mayhew his heires doe owe 
me for not performing their bargaine wth me, for wch 
the said myll was pte of my assurance — to be equally 
divided among them. — To the childn of my dau. 
Bradstreet, another 6th. — To the children of my 



195 

dau. Denison, another 6th- — To the children of my 
dau. Wooibridge another 6th. Also vnto to the 
aforesaid Thomas Dudley, another 6th ; & to the 
aforesaid John Dudley the other 6th. If my sonne 
Samull Dudley, or any of my three daughters, 
Bradstreete, Denison, or Woodbridge, have any 
more children, they shall haue equal shares with the 
rest. To enter upon said mill & lands the 20th day 
of October next, after ray death & not before. — 
They to pay my dau. Sarah Pacy, half yearly, 20 
s. apiece yearly. To the deacons of the church of 
Roxbury, 5 markes, by them to be distributed to the 
poor of said towne. Worthy & beloued friends, 
John Elliott, teacher of the church at Roxbury, 
Samull DaJi forth, pvLstor of the said church, John 
Johnson, Surveyor Generall of the Armes, & Wil- 
lim Parkes of the sQ.id church, glueing to each of 
them, if they shall Hue, 2 years after my death, 5 /. 
apiece — that they will doe for mee & mine as I 
would haue done for them & theirs in the like case. 
In my former will I have named my sons executors, 
but better considering of their remote dwelling, &c., 
I have chosen my aforesaid friends to be executors. 

Tho ; Dudley. 

To grand-childe Thomas Dudley, 10 Z a yeare, 
for 2 yrs after my death, besides what I shall owe 
the colledge for him at my death. To grand-childe, 
John Dudley, 15 /. a yeare for 3 yeares after my 
death. To wife I give the tyme & interest I haue 



196 

in Johi Ranken, also all my rent & profitts of my 
will at Watertowne, from the day of my death till 
the 20th of October, then next following, on condi- 
tion that she giae to my dau., Sarah Pacy, her di- 
ett, &c., or after the rate of 6 /, by the yeare, till 
she is to receive what I haue giuen her out of my 
wall — I means her first payment thereof Whereas 
my Sonne, Samuell Dudley, hath been importunate 
with me to mayntaine his sonne, Thomas, at ye col- 
fedge at Cambridge, untill the month of August, 
1654, when he is to take his 2d. degree, I haue con- 
sented thereto, but soe that the case of the Educacon 
of my yonnger children doth compell me to retreate 
and revoake from ray said sonne, Samuell, and his 
other children & their heeres, the 6th part of my 
mill & lands at Watertowne, and do revoake & call 
back also 20 Z. I gaue to the said Thomas Dudleys 
his soone, & 45 Z. I gaue to John Dudley, another 
of the sonnes of my said sonne Samuell Dudley ^ 
wch I hereby doe, yett because it is not equall that 
John Dudley, aforesaid (who hath been sevuisable 
to mee) should losse any thing by my benefycence 
to his brother, I do hereby giue vnto him, the said 
John Dudley, all the said 6th part of my myll & 
land at Watertowne, wch I had formerly giuen to 
his father, or his younger brothers & sisters, so 
that I haue settled a 3d part of the said mill vpon 
him the said John Dudley, & a 6th part vpon the 
said Thomas Dudley. Witness my hand, this 13th 
day of April, 1653. Thomas Dudley. 



197 

My will is that this schedule be annexed to my 
will, & be as authenticall as the same, and my mean- 
ing is, that this 6th part of the mill at Watertowne 
be charged wth 40 s. a yeare, to be paid to my dau. 
Sarah Pacy, as before this schedule was made. — 
My dau. Pacy to haue guen her a feather bed & 
boulster, wch shee had when she liued last at Bos- 
ton, one yellowe Rugg & 2 blanketts of the worser 
sort, 2 paire of little sheetes, & a chest. 

May 28th, 1653. . Tho : Dudley. 

The charge of my long sicknesse, I thereby being 
disenabled to make bargaines as I was wont for the 
vpholding of my estate, I finde my estate thereby, 
and by other meanes see weakned, that the due care 
of my thre youngest children's education compelleth 
mee to revoake & detract a 6th part of what I had 
giuen to mine other children <fe grand childn out of 
my will, & settle it vpon my three younger childn, I 
do therefore recall from my other childn. a 6th part 
out of euery share wch by my will I had formerly 
giuen them. And I giue the said 6th parts to my 
said three youngest children. Witness my hand to 
this Schedule also. Witness, Samuel Danforih, 
who wrot this, as Mr. Dudley dictated to me by his 
direction, this 8th day of July, 1653. 

My three youngest childn. shalbe rateably charged 
for what is here giuen them to my daughter Sarah 
Pacy, as the others are. Tho : Dudley, 

17* 



198 

Mr. John Johnson, on the 15th of August, 1653, 
appeered before the Magistrates, & did on his oath 
present this as the last will of Tho : Dudley, late of 
Roxbury, Esqr. wh was found in the chest of the said 
Thomas Dudley, psently after his decease, vnder 
locke & key. 

Edwd. Rawson, Recorder. 

The magistrates did allow & approue of this will 
U'ith the schedules annexed. Present, Richard 
Bellingham, Esq. Mr. A^'owell, & Mr. Hibbins, 

Edwd. Rawson, Recorder. 

Genealogical Register, Vol. V. pp. 295-7.] 



Mris Dorothy Dudley [" a gentlewoman 
whose extraction and estate were considerable," 
\vife of Gov. Thomas Dudley, died December 27, 
1643, aged 61. Born 1582.] 

Mary Bridges the wife of Edward Bridges. 

John Trumbell. 

Anderson. 

Robert Pepper a man servant. 

Mr. John Hall. 

John Bowles [for many years a ruling elder of 
the church in Roxbury. The Records contain many 
particulars respecting him, out of which an account 
will be collected.] 

Dorothy Bowles the wife of John Bowles — 
[came from England with him, was a member 
of the church, and died Nov. 3d, 1649, leaving no 



199 

children. Mr. Bowles's second wife was Eliza beth, 
only child of elder Isaac Heath.] 

Thomas Bumsted, he came to this land iii Ihe 
5th month of the yeare 1640, he brought 2 small 
children, Thomas and Jeremiah. Hannah his daugh- 
ter, borne the 25 day of the 11th month ano. 1641, 
He and his wife were dismissed to Boston. [His 
will, made 25 May 1677, proved 4th August after, 
names a son Jeremy, and three daughters : Hannah^ 
wife of Thomas Sherwood, Mary wife of Ambrose 
Dawes, and Mary, wife of Samuel Bosworth. 

Winthrop tells a story of "a child of one Bum- 
sted, a member of the church," of about eight years 
of age, " that fell from a gallery in the meeting- 
house, about eighteen feet high, and brake the arm 
and shoulder, (and was also committed to the Lord 
in the prayers of the church, with earnest desires, 
that the place where his people assembled to his 
worship might not be defiled with blood,) and it 
pleased the Lord that this child was soon perfectly 
recovered. — Hist, of Mass. ii. 203.] 

SusANE Bumsted, the wife of Thomas Bum- 
sted. 

Cheny the wife ofWilliam Cheny. 

Barbara Welde, the second wife of Joseph 
Weld. [See many interesting particulars in Savage's 
Winthrop, volume i. 78, by which it appears that 
he was a brother of Rev. Thomas Weld, of Roxbu- 
ry, the enemy of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson, and was 
appointed her keeper, until the Spring, when the 



200 

sentence of banishment by the General Court might 
be executed — " where," as Winthrop says, " she 
was well provided for, and her own friends and the 
elders permitted to go to her, but none else." But it 
appears that Winthrop himself was the author of the 
disgusting " story " about Mrs. Hutchinson; and that 
Weld wrote, as he said, merely the preface. This 
appears conclusively by Bailey's tract, entitled " A 
Dissuasive," &c. Weld says, that he saw it in 
print, &c. The probability is, that the work was 
printed, and not published, when it first came to 
Weld's hand, and that it was so far altered and en- 
larged, as to receive the preface by Weld as an en- 
dorsement to Winthrop's monstrous assertions in the 
*' story," and with this additional authority from one 
present in England, a witness ready for personal 
examination, it was actually published, for the first 
time, in 1644. The reader is referred to Mr. Sav- 
age's well-deserved criticisms on this production 
in various notes to his edition of Winthrop's 
history. It is worthy of note, that Weld never ven- 
tured to return to New England, to meet the Hutch- 
inson family. Captain Joseph Weld having been on 
the jury in the La Tour and D'Aulnay case, soon 
after went to London, and was there arrested and 
forced to find sureties in a bond of 4000 pounds. 
The story is related in Winthrop, ii. 247-8. The 
occurrence is thus set forth in the small quarto news- 
paper of 1645, entitled, 



201 

*' Perfect Occurrences of Parliament And Chief Col- 
lections of Letters from the Armie." "-The 19th 
Weeke." " From Friday the 2 of Mayy till Fri- 
day the 9 of the same, 1645." 
" Monday, May the 5. 1645. A Petition was this 
day read in the house of Lords, concerning the Mer- 
chants of New England, directed; To the Right Ho- 
Tiourable the House of Peers, in Parliament assem- 
bled. The Petition was from Alderman Bartlcy, 
and Master Saint John, two New England Mer- 
chants, Concerning Some damages that they had re- 
ceived by the English Inhabitants there, about a 
Charter-party that was made to a French man onely 
to go as a Passenger in their Ship, who accordingly 
was transported thither; and upon Some dispute in 
that Country, the people there {whom some call a 
free State) in assenting to the said Frenchman, 
which was imposed upon the Master of the Ship; 
onely upon a peremptory quarrell, to the great pre- 
judice of the Merchants here." 

Captain Weld's widow Barbara returned to Pro- 
bate 4 (12) 1646 an inventory of her husband's Es- 
tate, appraised by Isaac Heath, Wm. Dennison, 
John Johnson and William Parke, at £2028. 11. 3.} 
AiiLis a maide servant. 
Anderson the wife of Gowen Anderson. 
John Mays. 

Mays the wife of John Mays. 
Lewis Jones. 
Ann Jones the wife of Lewis Jones. 



202 

John Mathews, He was convicted of noto- 
rious drunkenness &. cast out of ye Church, 1 of 3rn. 
1659. But afterward restored agayn upon his re- 
pentance. 

Mathews the wife of Mathews. 

Richard Woddy. 

WoDDY the wife of Richard Woddy. 

Stebbins the wife of Martin Stebbins. She was 
so vyolent in her passion yt she offered vyolence to 
her husband, wch being divulged was of such infa- 
my, yt she was cast out of sd church, but soone after 
she humbled herself & was received in againe. 

Holmes the wife of George Holmes. 

Judith Graves the wife of John Graves. 

ToTMAN the wife of John Totman. 

Thomas Baker. 

William Lewis. 

Lewis the wife of William Lewis. 

SisLY Chapin the wife of Samuel Chapin. 

Elizabeth Roberts the wife of John Roberts. 

Mr. Hugh Prichards, recommended from the 
church at Cape Ann. [Winthrop, vol. ii. page 307, 
1647, says, " Captain [Joseph] Welde being dead, 
the young men of the town agreed together to choose 
one George Denison, a young soldier come lately out 
of the wars in England, which the ancient and chiefs 
men of the town understanding, they came together 
at the time appointed, and chose one Mr. Prichard, 
a godly man and one of the chief in the town, pass- 
ing by their Lieutenant, fearing lest the young Deni- 



203 

son would carry it from him, whereupon much dis* 
content and murmuring arose in the town. The 
young men were over strongly bent to have their 
will, although their election was void in law, (George 
Denison not being then a freeman,) and the ancient 
men over-voted them about twenty, and the lieuten- 
ant was discontented because he was neglected, &c. 
The cause coming to the court, and all parties being 
heard, Mr. Prichard was allowed, and the young 
men were pacified, and the lieutenant."] 

Mrig Elnor Prichard the wife of Mr. Hugh 
Prichard. 

ScARBRo' and wife of John Scarbro'. 

Bridget Dennison the wife of George t)en-* 
nison. 

Elizabeth Baker the wife of Thomas Baker, 

Mary Jordan a maide servant. 

Edward White. 

James Morgan. 

Thomas Roberts. 

Edmund Sheffeild, who was dismissed to yd 
Ch. at Brantrey. 

John Woody. 

Thomas Reives a man servant. 

Mary Turner a maide servant. 

Richard Goard. 

Jon Starkweather the wife of Robert Stark- 
weather. 

Grace Newellj the daughter of Abraha:n 
NeWelh 



204 

l*Hit.ip TORlir. 

Richard Wooddy, Juniof. 

Sarah the maid servant of bro. Park* 

JoANE Atkins the maide servant of Mr. Prich- 
ard. She married one Smith and had letters of dis- 
mission to Maiden, this 13th 2m. 1669. [This entry 
indicates the probable date of making this record 
of the first comers, or this portion of it.] 

WiiiLiAM Frankling, in whom we had good 
satisfaction in his Godlynesse, yet it pleased God to 
?eave him to some acts of rigor & cruelty to a boy^ 
his servant, who dyed under his hand ; but sundry 
sins he was guilty of, & the scandal so greate yt he 
was excommunicated yt day month, the 21 of the 2d 
Ml. 1644 & shortly after executed. [ Winthrop, ii, 
1"83, 184, thus r«lat^s the facts : 

" The third matter which fell into consideration, 
at the said meeting at Salem, was about one Frank- 
lin, who at the last court of sssistants was found 
guilty of murder, but, some of the magistrates doubt- 
ing of the justice of the case, he was reprieved till 
the next court of assistants. The case was this. He 
Imd taken to apprentice one Nathaniel Sewell, one 
of those children sent over the last year for the coun- 
try ; the boy had the scurvy, and was withal very 
noisome, and otheiwise ill disposed. His master 
used him with continual rigour and unmerciful cor- 
rection, and exposed him many times to much cold 
tind w^et in the winter season, and used divers acts 
of rigour towards him, as hanging him in the diim- 



205 

ney, &c. and the boy being very poor and weak, he 
lied him upon an horse and so brought him (some- 
times sitting and sometimes hanging down) to Bos- 
ton, being five miles off, to the magistrates, and by 
the way the boy calling much for water, would give 
him none, though he came close by it, so as the boy 
was near dead when he came to Boston, and died 
within a few hours after. Those who doubted 
whether this were murder or not, did stick upon two 
reasons chiefly. 1. That it did not appear that the 
master's intention was to hurt him, but to reform 
him. 2. In that which was most likely to be the oc- 
casion or cause of his death, he was busied about an 
action which in itself was lawful, viz. the bringing of 
him before the magistrates ; and murder cannot be 
committed bat where the action and intention both 
are evil. To this it was answered, that this contin- 
ual act of cruelty did bring him to death by degrees, 
and the last act was the consummation of it ; and 
that this act, in regard to the subject, who, to the 
apprehension of all that saw him, was more fit to be 
kept in his bed than to ^e lialed to correction, was 
apparently unlawful. As in case a man had a ser- 
vant sick in bed of the small-pox, newly come forth, 
and that his master knowing and seeing these upon 
his body should, against the physician's advice, hale 
him forth of his bed into the open air in frosty wea- 
ther, upon pretence that he might ease nature, &c., 
this act, in regard of the state of the subject, were 
utterly unlawful, and if the servant should die under 
18 



206 

his hand. &c. it were murder in him. As for the in- 
tention, though prima intentio might be to reform 
him, yet sure proxima intentio was evil, because it 
arose from distemper of passion ; and if a man in a 
sudden passion kill his dear friend or child, it is 
murder, though his prima intentio were to instruct or 
admonish him : and in some cases where there ap- 
pears no intention to hurt, as where a man knowing 
his act to have used to push, shall not keep him in, 
so as he kills a man, he was to die for it, though to 
keep an ox were a lawful act, and he did not intend 
hurt, but because he did not what he reasonably 
ought to prevent, &c. therefore he was a murderer. 
And that in Exodns if a master strike his ser- 

vant with a rod, which is a lawful action, and he die 
under his hand, (as this servant did,) he was to die 
for it : — And that in Deut. if a man strike with 

a weapon or with his hand, or any thing wherewith 
he may die, and he die, he is a murderer, — shows 
plainly, that let the means be what it may, if it be 
voluntarily applied to an evil intent, it is murder ; 
according to that judgment given against her 

that gave a potion to one to procure his love, and it 
killed him, it was adjudged murder. 

All the magistrates seeming to be satisfied upon 
this conference, warrant was signed by the governour 
for his execution a week after, which was not ap- 
proved by some, in regard of his reprieval to the next 
court of assistants. But it was without any good 
reason, for a condemned man is in the power of the 



207 

magistrate to be executed when he please, and the 
reprieval was no stipulation or covenant with him, 
but a determination among the magistrates for the 
satisfaction of some who were doubtful, which satis- 
faction being attained, currat lex &c. Pro. 22. He 
shall go to the pit, let no man hinder him. 

This man had been admitted into the church of 
Roxbury about a month before, and upon this he was 
cast out; but the church, in compassion to his soul, 
after his condemnation, procured license for him to 
come to Roxbury, intending to receive him in again 
before he died, if they might find him truly penitent. 
But though presently after his condemnation he judg- 
ed himself, and justified God and the court, yet then 
he quarrelled with the witnesses, and justified him- 
self, and so continued even to his execution, profess- 
ing assurance of salvation, and that God would never 
lay the boy his death to his charge, but the guilt of 
his blood would lie upon the country. Only a little 
before he was turned off the ladder, he seemed to 
apprehend some hardness of heart, that he could not 
see himself guilty of that which others did."] 

Elizabeth Williams, daughter of John Wil- 
liams. [There is a story about one John Williams, 
in Winthrop i. 241.] 

Henry Farnham. 

Elizabeth Pepper the wife of Robert Pepper. 

Ann Direton, a maide servant. 

Thomas Gardiner. 

Widdow Gardiner. 



208 

Elizabeth How, daughter of Abraham How. 

Ann Brewer daughter of Dan: Brewer. 

Mary Paison wife of Edward Paison. 

Hannah Wilson wife of Wilson. She 

is bro. Craft's daughter. 

Elizabeth Clarke wife of James Clarke. — 
She is bro. Wright's daughter. 

Stonehard the wife of John Stonehard. 

Mary Wise the wife of Joseph Wise. 

John Stebbin. 

Ann Stebbin the wife of John Stebbin., 

Goodwife Farrow. 

Goodwife Reade. 

Mary Heath. 

John Stonhard. 

Robert Harris. 

John Turner. 

Edward Dennison [was one of the sympa« 
thizers with the Hutchinson party. Winthrop i. 248] 

Martha Medcalfe. 

Georg Beard. 

Samuel Williams, between 15 & 16 y of age. 

John Weld. 

Elizabeth Davis wife of William Davis. 

Thankfull Pearepoynt, wife of John Peir- 
point. 

Hannah Heath, daughter of William Heath. 

[After this, dates occur in the margin, and the en- 
tries are made in the hand of Mr. Danforth,.] 



209 

March 4. 1649, Mris. Barker, a Gentlewomaji 
that came from Barbados hither for the Gospells 
sake we found her not so well acquainted wth her 
own heart & the wayes & workings of God's Spirit 
in converting a Sinner vnto God, yet full of Sweet 
affection & we feared a little too confident — we re- 
ceived her not wthout feares & Jealsouyes. 

Goodwife Gardiner, the wife of Thomas Gar- 
diner. 

Goodwife Gardiner the wife of Peter Gardiner. 

Goodwife Lyon the wife of WiUiam Lyon. She 
had been sometime distracted.) 

Goodwife Patchin a poor old woman. 

May 12, 1650. Samuel Danforth recom- 
mended & dismissed from Cambridge Church & ad- 
mitted here. [Danforth was one of the leading 
names. See Holmes's Annals, Allen's and Eliot's 
Biographical Dictionary, Rev, Samuel Sewall in 
Amer. Quar, Reg. etc. etc.] 

Mrs. Sarah Alcock wife of Mr, John Alcocke. 

Goodwife Elizabeth Dennison wife of Ed- 
ward Dennison (she was ye daughter of Mr, Joseph 
Weld) confirmed, 

Susanna Polly the wife of John Polly. 

June 30. 1650. Mr. John Alcock confirmed. 

Hugh Thomas. 

John Polly. 

October 20. 1650. Hugh Roberts. 

Nov. 17. 1650. John Perepoint. 

June 15. 1651. Nicholas Williams. 
18* 



210 

[After this date the second generation, the chil- 
dren of the first planters, are frequently mentioned.] 

Nov. 23. 1651. William Garee sonne to broth' y 
Arthur Garee confirmed. 

Isaac Heath son to William Heath confirmed. 

March 23. 1651. Daniel Welde recomended vnto 
us from the church at Brantrey. 

3m. 23d. 1652. Peleg Heath son of Willm Heath 
confirmed. 

4m. 6d. '52. Sister Peake — sister Devotion. 

4m 20d. Joseph Grigs. 

Lydia Eliot daughter to Deacon [ ] Eliot, 

confirmed, since dismissed ye ch. at Taunton, Anno 
1666. 

3d. 2m. 1653. Abraham Newel, Junr. confirmed. 

4m, 26d. Susanna Heath ye wife of Peleg Heath. 

Hannah Garee ye wife of Willm Garee confirmed. 

Magdalen Bullard, a maid servant of brother Wil- 
liams Dismissed to Medfield this 22d of 3m. 1670, 
being married to John Parrich of Medfield. 

John Ruggles junior confirmed. 

29d. 11m. 1653. Tho. Weld confirmed, son to 
Mr* Tho. Weld, sometime Pastor of this church. 

Margaret Weld ye wife of Mr. John Welde. 

Theodea Williams wife of Samuel Williams daugh- 
ter to Deacon Park confirmed. 

14d. 13m. 1654. Abraham How confirmed. 

13d. 3m. 1657. Goodman Griffin. 

19. 5m. 1657. Mrs. Rebecca Burrows who came 



211 

from Virginia yt she niight enjoy God in his Ordin- 
[ances] in N. E. 

Elizabeth Clerk ye wife of Hugh Clark., being dis- 
missed from Watertown churth. 

Huntley ye wife of John Huntley. 

11. 2m. 1658. John Hanchet. 

12. 7m. 1658. Edward Morris admitted. 
17.8m. 1658. John Maioh was confirmed. 

14. 9m. 1658. John Watson was confirmed. 

21. 9m. 1658. Isaac Williams was confirmed. 
23. 11m. 1658. Mary Childe ye wife of Benjamin 

Childe. 
Mary Ruggles ye wife of John Ruggles, Junior. 
Mary Heath ye wife of Isaac Heath, Junior. 
Mary Griggs ye w'ife of John Griggs. 
Martha Parkes, daughter to Deacon Parkes, con- 
firmed. 

13. 12m. 1658. Samuel Ruggles was confirmed- 

15. 3m. ('59.) Samuel Mayes was confirmed. 

22. 3m. ('59.) Sarah May, wife to John May, 
was confirmed. 

Bridget Davis wife to Tobijah Davis, admitted. 
Susanna Newell wife to Abraham Newell, Junior, 
was admitted. 
Grace Morris wife to Edw. Morris admitted. 
Exercise Felton a maid, of Salem, admitted. 

11. 7m. ('59.) Hugh Clarke was admitted. 

12, 12m. ('59 ) Elizabeth Bovven personally & 
solemnly owned ye covenant, & thereupon had her 
child Baptized. 



212 

29d. 12m. 1660. Mrs. Mary Danforth, being dis- 
missed from Boston church, joyned in covenant here. 

Mrs. Dorothy Welde, being dismissed from Lyn, 
was admitted here. 

Sarah May, being dismissed from Dorchester, 
joyned here : an aged woman. 

Hanna Hopkins dismissed from Dorchester joyned 
in this church. 

27. 3m. 1660. John Mayes Junior was admitted 
to full Communion. 

3d. 12m. 1660. Isaac Newell was admitted to 
full Communion. 

7d. 2m. 1661. Mary Griffin wife of bro. [ ] 
Griffin joyned to this church. 

Elizabeth Brewer wife to Nath. Brewer joyned to 
this church. 

22. 7m. 1662. Hanna Ruggles wife to Samuel 
Ruggles. 

Anne Garee, wife to Nath. Garee. 

Elizabeth Newell, wife to Isaac Newell. 

Mary Watson, wife to John Watson, Jun. 

Sarah Peak wife to Jonathan Peake. 

Hanna Mayo wife to John Mayo. 

54. 9m. 1661. Remember Palfrey, a maid ser- 
vant, since wife to Peter Aspinwall. 

Dorcas Watson, daughter to John Watson, Sen., 
dismissed to Medford 10th 3m. 1670. 

6th. 5m. 1662. Mrs. Sarah Eliot, wife to 
Mr. John Eliot Jun. [Son of the Apostle and first 
minister of Newton. 



218 

Elisabeth Speare. Mrs. Eliot*s parentage and 
the exact date of her marriage are unknown ; she 
left one child, Sarah, afterward the wife of the Rev. 
and Hon. John Bowles. Mr. Eliot's 2d wife, Eliza- 
beth, daughter of Major-General Gookin, of Cam- 
bridge, survived him and became the wife of Edmund 
Quinsey, Esq. ofBraintree. Hon. John Eliot of Ct., 
Har. Col. 1685, was the only issue of her first mar- 
riage.] 

22th. Im. 1662-3. John Bridge. John More. 

5th. 2m. 1663. Elisabeth Harris wife to Robt. 
Harris. 

Rebecca Craft wife to John Craft. 

Martha Newell wife to Jacob Newel. 

Prudence Bridge, wife to John Bridge. 

Elisabeth Brewer wife to Nath. Brewer. 

7th. 4m. 1663. Richard Meede. 

Alice Davis wife to William Davis. 

1. 9m. 1663. Hanna Brewer wife to Daniel Brew° 
er, daughter to Isaac Morrel, was admitted to full 
communion. 

24. 2m. 1664. Thomas Woodward. 

4th. 12m. 1664. Sarah Frissell, wife to James 
Frissell. 

5th. Im. 1664-5. William Cheney. 

Robert Hawes. 

16. 2m. 1665. John Chandler— Jacob Newell— 
solemnly owned ye covenant. 

28, 3m. 1665. Mary, wife to Job Tyler. She 
was dismissed to Mendon 4m. 1672. 

Sarah wife to Richd Chamberline; Elisabeth wife 



214 

to John Chandler — Sarah, wife to Thomas Foster ; 
admitted to full communion. 

18th. 4m. 1665. Thomas Foster. 

20. 6m. 1665. Edward Bugley. An old man. 

Maria Pierrepoint wife to Robt Pierrepont. 

24. 7m. 65. John Prentice son to o'r sister Watson. 

5th. 9m. 65. William Lyons admitted to full 
communion. 

Samuel Craft solemnly owned ye Covenant. 

12. 9ber. 65. Benjamin Eliot, batchelor of Arts, 
was admitted to full communion. 

1st 5m. 1666. John Gorton an old man admitted 
to full communion. 

8th 5m. 1666. Mary Polly, ye wife of John Polly. 

Desire truth Acrees ye wife of John Acrees. 

22. 5. 1666. More ye wife of John More. 

Sharp ye wife of John Sharp. 

Elizabeth wife of Joseph Buckmaster, solemnly 
owned ye covenant. 

12m. 1666. Timothy Stevens solemnly owned ye 
covenant. 

24th Im. . Sarah Stevens — Mary Marsh- 
craft, solemnly owned ye covenant. 

1. 19m. 1667. The wife of John Parker— Eliza- 
beth Parker a maide, rec'd to full communion. 

26. 11m. 1667. Mary Boltstone solemnly owned 
ye covenant. 

22. Im. 1667-8. Elizabeth ye wife of John White 
jun. solemnly owned ye coovenant. 

5. 2m. 1668. Steven Williams & Sarah his wife 
solemnly owned ye covenant. 



215 

28. 4m. 1668. James Clark joyned himself to this 
Church i 

22. 9m. 1668. Mary, wife to Nathaniel Johnson 
admitted, but not to full communion. 

39. 3m. 1669. Joanna Davies, grand child to Mr. 
Nicholas Parker, owned ye covenant. 

1. 6m. 1669. Mary, wife of John Hemingway 
Joanna, wife of Joshua Hemingway, ware admitted 
members of this Ch. tho' not to full communion. 

10. 8m. 1669, wife to Tho Andrews 

solemnly owned ye covenant. 

13. 12m. 1669. Mr. Joseph Dudley & Mrs Re- 
becca his wife solemnly owned ye covenant, as also 
Mary Parker, daughter to Edmund Parker. 

20. 12. 1669. Martha^ daughter to James Clark, 
was admitted to full communion. 

30. 2m. 1670. Mary, wife to Caleb Lamb, solemn- 
ly owned the covenant. 

3. om. (70) Samuel Craft admitted to full com- 
munion. 

17. 5m. 70. Hanna wife to Joseph White solemnly 
owned ye covenant. 

4. 7m. 70. Mary wife to Thomas Swan, solemnly 
owned ye covenant. 

23. 8m. 70. Patience, wife to Nathaniel Homes, 
admitted but not to full communion. 

18. 10m. 70. Decline Lamb, alias Smith, solemn- 
ly owned ye covenant. 

8. 11m. 70. Deborah, wife to Jabesh Tatman, 
owned ye covenant. 



4 



/? 



216 

19. 12m. 70. Andrew Gardiner & Sarah his 
wife ; Sarah Cleaves, wife of William Cleaves — 
solemnly owned ye covenant. 

2d 2m. 71. Susanna, wife to John Bennet solemn- 
ly owned ye covenant. 

23. 2m. 71. John Holdbroke being dismissed 
from Dorchesterj was admitted here tho' not to full 
communion. 

30. 2m. 71. Elizabeth Whitney, daughter to Ro- 
bert Harris — Mary wife to John Davis, daughter to 
bro. Devotion — Hanna, wife to Isaac Curtis, daughter 
to John Polly — solemnly owned the covenant. 

Sarah wife to Sabin, daughter to bro. , dis- 
missed to Rehoboth. 

11. Im. 71. Tho. Lyons absolved from censure 
& solemnly owned ye covenant. 

23. 5m. 71. Mary Evans was admitted but not 
to full communion. 

23. 5m. 71. Edward Porter, Ann his wife, his 
son William Porter, his daughters Elizabeth Nash, 
Hanna Dinely, Mary Bennit & Deborah Porter were 
all dismissed to the third church in Boston. 

15. 8m 71. Isaac Johnson 3\xn. dismissed to the 
church at Middleton on ye river. 

22d 8m. 71. Mr. Joseph Dudley was admitted to 
full communion. 

29. 8m. 71. Mrs. Rebecca Dudley wile to Mr. Jo- 
seph Dudley — Mary Goard wife to Richard Goard — 
Mary Evans wife to John Evans — Mary Davis wife 
to John Davis — admitted to full communion. 



